It was supposed to be a short evening of theatre. The usual telling of tales heard and unheard of. A laugh here, a thought there, a poignant moment perhaps and if lucky a message to take home and digest.

It was supposed to be a short evening of theatre. The usual past tense narrative. Do you know what happened one day, and then...a few competent actors, some well delivered lines, some flashes of brilliance and if lucky, a performance that cut through the sweat and cooled our skin like a breath of fresh air under the hot and humid Lamakaan sky.

It was supposed to be...well it was supposed to be a lot of things...but a realtime performance it was definitely not supposed to be.  Something changed the format however, someone pulled the right switch and suddenly it was not a series of tales being recounted, but a series of incidences unfolding.

And I, the audience was not a sit down guest but Superman.

I was flying around town, looking down into homes, apartments, streets and at random scenes. In Realtime. As it happened. And what I saw was an amazing smörgåsbord of emotions and situations.

The first glimpse I had was of a black & white mermaid trying to see if she could fly. I thought this anxious young man wanted to save her, but he was more comfortable with his own agenda. And used his anxiety to steal a kiss, and his sad story to look at life anew.

Almost straight underneath, at the street corner was this poor lady trying to sell some lemonade. Dennis the Menace walked in and tried to buy off her last glass when he was rudely informed that the glass would cost him 33 lakhs of rupees.

Before you could understand that the lady was indeed serious about HER lemonade, HER last glass and HER price and empathise with Dennis’ confusion…damn he sold them lemonades only for 50 Cents in the comic books…

I peeked into one flat by mistake. Two women were sitting there, two best buddies and one woman was trying to convince her friend that a job that earned her double her salary just for fucking her husband three times a week was far better than working with Deloitte or whatever. Though the ladies were having what could possibly be, in other circumstances, an interesting conversation and confrontation, I felt that I had a responsibility to be a prude and quickly flew away for a refuelling of samosas and egg bondas. 

And then I saw Yamraj. He had this mere mortal next to him, and boy, was he stringing him around? By the end of their encounter he had hung the English Language and allowed it to stew in its own lexicon.

No, it was meant to be an evening of theatre but I think it ended up becoming a montage of sorts, a kind of slice of life imagery that took death (and dying) by surprise.

The Dramanon team was in its element. The set changes were near seamless. In fact the ‘partition on wheels’ set looked tailor made for Lamakaan. The actors were more than proficient.

Harika Vedula however was outstanding. She seems to be maturing day by day and was a delight to watch. Another actor worth praising is RK Shenoy who is consciously shedding his earlier frivolousness and delivering dialogs without too many laughter punctuations. Some amount of English language intervention in terms of pronunciations however may be called for, but I am nit picking really.

Ganesh Nallari’s intensity is his hallmark and he used that to good advantage and peppered his performance with a few comical and slapstick deviations.

Overall, I liked the deliberate ‘stayaway’ from the sheer morbidity of grey. The sadness and the pathos was served in small measures. And the end result was a pleasant walkaway. Well done Dramanon…you well deserve the sweaty hugs of appreciation.