Kaise Karenge?

Three To Tango

The plays Abhishek Pattnaik writes have unusual ideas, but he is an excellent actor 

too. His performance as a middle-aged Oriya professor in Two Adorable Losers was brilliant, even more so considering he is in his twenties

In his latest play, Kaise Karenge?, he has written an enviable part for himself as a patient of Dissociative Identity Disorder (or Multiple Personality Disorder), and brings the house down every time he makes a switch between his real self and his two alter egos.It can be argued that mental illness should be taken more seriously and not be turned into a gimmick for comedy, but then this play demands suspension of disbelief. It also has  positive portrayals of a caregiver and romantic partner, who treat the patient as normal and fight the "mad" label society gives people with mental problems.

Kapil Parasrampuria (Pattnaik) works at an ad agency, while his younger brother Saurav (Darsheel Safary) dreams of going to the Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, and almost gets in, when the sudden death of their mother, throws Kapil off balance. 

His meek personality splits into an aggressive Haryanvi thug and a romantic poet-- all the time his mothers white dupatta is wrapped round his neck.

Saurav sacrifices his career to look after his brother and eventually, with the help of Kapil's girlfriend (Gaurangi Dang) finds a way to use his 'special' abilities to work for him.

After establishing Kapil's condition, the play starts to get repetitive and goes on for much too long after the novelty wears out; it is Pattnaik's performance that keeps it consistently entertaining. Darsheel Safary is gaining in confidence with every play, and his caring brother is charming; Prakhar Singh as the doctor and as Rudra, Saurav's bratty rival is amusing, but Pattnaik simply dominates the stage. 

The Devil Wears Bataa

Who’s That Clown?

The Devil Wears Bataa is a catchy title, and those familiar with the work of playwright-director Meherzad Patel would already know that the play is a comedy, and this genre tops the popularity list among Mumbai’s audiences.

This production, too, opened to full houses and had audiences laughing uproariously at the absurd plot and cheeky political caricatures—none named but all easily recognizable.

Madam or Mummy (Dilnaz Irani) wants her foolish son Pappi (Siddharth Merchant) to be the next prime minister, which displeases the current Sikh PM, Paaji (Danesh Irani); he plots to put his own man in the chair, and finds a British actor Nathan Mascerenhas (Darius Shroff) to lose his posh accent and become a Gujarati former tea vendor, with the same initials—no prizes for figuring out who is who.

Meanwhile, in the US, the red-faced, orange-haired Donald Duck (Danesh Khambata) wants to put his candidate in the White House, and gets his Indian-origin aide Bobby (Sajeel Parakh) to find a black man for the job. But nobody accepts, so he gets a dark-skinned Malayali, Balakrishna Oomen (Jigar Mehta) to step in as the first black President of the United States—sharing the initials of you-know-who.

After setting up the implausible but imaginative scenario, Patel goes for easy laughs—stereotypes, weird accents, and political humour of the elementary level of Whatsapp forwards. An audience in the mood to laugh, doesn’t care about racism, sexism and the occasional bit of vulgarity. When a grey-haired man in colourful jackets says “Mitron,” or Paaji yells Raphael to summon an off-stage minion, the chuckles roll in before the line is completed. And, well, the man from Republic TV (Mihir Mehra) has just to utter the word “nation” to get people guffawing.

Patel has fabulous comic actors in Danesh Irani and Jigar Mehta, who raise their performances above the level of mimicry. But Danesh Khambata in a fat suit and unsightly wig is a scene-stealer, mainly because the man he impersonates is such a cartoon. It’s poor brainless Pappi, promising a machine that makes gold from potatoes, who is the target of the funniest gags.

The play does go on for too long, and the cleverness dries up long before the two sides meet, but audiences looking for an evening’s entertainment get their money’s worth. Anyone who wants to see really sharp satire could look for videos on YouTube; there are enough comedians who have the courage to lampoon the famous and the powerful. It must be said, however, that these days when everybody is so quick to take offence, even a play as innocuous as this one is sticking its neck out.