Today was my first evam show and i was really looking forward to these guys whom i believed were THE happening theater group in chennai. the play was somewhat disappointing. No doubt that these guys were the best theatrical artists around . But then the whole thing at the end suggested only two possibilities.
a. Either Shakespeare and his hamlet were dumb to the core. or
b. the spoof on hamlet was in itself a spoof.
Talking about spoof on spoof, the first part of the play was a 'play on the play'. now this bit was by the lesser known members of evam and they surely did a great job. What with members popping up from the middle of the crowd saying 'CUT’ and joining the play. but the play got a little ( was it just a little ?) out of hand when the number of 'cuts' from the chairs kept increasing. the first 'cut' sequence was perfect and it did confuse the audience (something that was intended.) the second 'cut' was kind of tolerable. from the third 'cut' on you start wondering when the guy sitting next to you is going to jump up and say 'cut' and join the people on stage. the first part did have a message, it did try to tell how tough it is for the theater artists to present a play. but the attempt to make it hilarious, had a very bad toll on the theme of the play and at the end you only wished, oh shucks! they could have saved some of those for the next play! ( and the next, and the next, man it was loaded with hilarious situations and too much laughing can really be bad)
the second part was different in its own way , what with only three people acting and the amount of costume change required. karthik, sunil and tmk were the best in business and they did make the audience laugh their ass out. but at the end when people walk out you suddenly feel this question popping out in your mind asking what the hell was the plot ? why the hell was i laughing? i mean this was no better than those thirty minutes spoof on movies that come in all the tamil channels ( which usually suck big time) on which you dont care to laugh out. Evam did make you laugh out but portraying the villain farting, not once but thrice, that to for almost a
minute each time was the last straw. after sometime you stop laughing, you stop smiling and there is this frown in your face that stays until the end of the play. this was most apparent on my friend's face who was a regular and who positively swore that it cannot get worse than this.
what the play lacked was quality comedy, something that had a meaning to it and something that will make you laugh at the instant and something that will always put a smile on your face when you remember it. the quality of the comedy was no better than what you can expect from vadivelu and parthiban. the comedy was so bloody slapstick that a guy, not in the right temper, would have surely wanted to push a stick up your…….. no, no lets not get too hard on these guys. They are good and my friend swears that he has had better experiences with the previous plays, may be its just my luck that i had to debut with a spoof that turned out to be a spoof on us and a play that was on a play in us. confusing right? well that’s exactly how i felt, and that was the word ('confusing') scribbled on a paper which sunil passed to the audience.
Acting: 10 ( No doubt in this)
Set: 8( this is my first time , so i might be wrong here)
BGM: 0 ( what with playing rajini's BGM in a Shakespearean spoof, it was
one big bakra)
theme and moral: ????
P.S: this happened outside the theater before the play started. there was a princess clone who sagaro positively mistook to be the princess and who had come with her boy friend. both of them sat in front of us and sagaro went"excuss me do i know you?" and that was followed by three unique facial expressions that made me wonder why sagaro has still not joined evam. the first one was the 'what the hell' look from the girl, the second was a 'stay of my property' kind of look from her guy, the third one was from sagaro which i still have not deciphered, only wish i could have caught that look on a camera.