The Bureaucrat

Babu Diaries

That Mumbai audiences are partial to comedy was proved once again by the packed shows of Rahul da Cunha’s new play The Bureaucrat, written by Anuvab Pal, who is a wiz with comedy and a regular on the city’s stand-up comedy circuit. Rahul da Cunha teams up for the second time with Pal, after Chaos Theory. The Bureaucrat grew out of a short piece Pal wrote for Rage’s production One On One, which in 15 minutes or so encapsulated what went wrong with Nehru’s India. The full-length play is more about today’s India without much patience for nostalgia. 

A fabulous cast, led by Bugs Bhargava Krishna as an old bureaucrat (with Aseem Hattangady playing his younger self-cum-conscience) kicked downstairs by the home minister (ably played by Jaswinder Singh with a Haryanvi-Dilli accent) reminded audiences of corruption in high places, amidst a society changing so rapidly that a 31-year-old VJ Dhishoom (Nein Bhoopalam) finds that he can’t keep up with the new teen lingo and attitude. The mantri-babu scenario immediately brings to mind the brilliant TV series Yes Minister (also its sequel Yes Prime Minister), only here the bureaucrat is not one to hoodwink the clueless politician, it’s the other way round. Pal and da Cunha must also have dropped the idea of sophisticated or understated humour for the broad, crowd-pleasing farce ofThe Bureaucrat and they hit it right in the head—the laughter often drowns out the lines. The funniest part of an opportunistic bimbo, the minister’s Girl Friday is played by Anu Menon, who rises above the stereotype of the silly secretary to nearly steal the show. But those expecting something deep or thought provoking (and comedy can be that too) might be disappointed.