Habitually feelin’ kinda blue
THE SHOW
What: A play, Bombay Talkies
When: April 7, 7.30pm, April 8, 3.30pm
Where: Ranga Shankara, JP Nagar
Online booking:
www.bookmyshow.com
The dark side of life is contained within human nature itself. Maybe the demons that dance before us all are our own - crime, corruption, bloodshed - as we, unable to hold out against our primal instincts, give in. What’s more, when the gory details are laid out before us, they're actually mighty funny. We laugh because there is little else to be done. With Bombay Talkies, all these things become painfully obvious as eight people, who could quite easily be any one of us, sit down and talk about their lives.
“The play is about individual characters who live in Mumbai, their lives and the many issues that come forth,” says Vikram Kapadia, director, who has also written the collection of monologues. Sadness, despair and heartbreak spew forth from every story you hear. Corruption, loneliness, career struggles and love form the essence of the stories you will hear. The monologues are all set in Mumbai and are unconnected to each other, but give it some thougth and you will see them piecing together a life that could be anybody's.
Dimple, for example, was a child star and has to come to terms with being an adult and having outgrown her stardom, too. She has to struggle with her career now, just like any other actor, which is something her pride will simply not permit. To constantly be the butt of somebody's jokes loses its charm very quickly, too. "It's a very subtle form of abuse," says Vikram. Throw in a story about a fixer, a Gujarati boy who finds love and the life of a single mother in Mumbai and you have quite an assortment of emotions, whose pathos somehow manages to keep you in fits of laughter.
“This is not the kind of play a group of students fresh out of college would put up,” says Vikram. To hold the audience's attention through a series of monologues can be a dicey affair, "but the trick is to write pieces that are not theatrical in that sense,” he adds.Vikram talks especially about the story of a journalist whose conscience pricks her into resigning from her job.“It deals with all the negative aspects of the goings on in this country which she used to thrive on,” he says. It's those negative aspects of life that Vikram seems to be drawn to most of all. “It's just based on an observation of life,” he says, by way of explanation.
"In some ways, I'm a cynic, I somehow manage to stay a positive, amiable person," he laughs. Don't come expecting what Vikram calls a 'popcorn evening.' The evening might hold plenty of laughter, too, but what you will come away with is an incisive look at life, at human nature and the situations and emotions that propel our existence from one moment to the next.
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