A comedy of errors and incessant laughs — Bengalureans can look forward to an evening of rib-tickling theatre this weekend. Ashvin Gidwani’s The Scent Of a Man — Taste The Forbidden Fruit is being staged in the city and the comedy stars an ensemble of talented artistes like Suchitra Pillai, Ash Chandler, Bhavna Pani and Deven Khote.
Talking about the play, Suchitra says, “It’s a marital comedy. It’s a fun play about two couples and what transpires one evening when they end up being in the same house. There’s mistaken identity and it has a lot to do with marital and extra-marital relationships. Everybody in the audience will be able to relate to it.”
Throwing light on how the idea of this play struck him, Ashvin says, “The idea came up nine years ago when I was sitting in a living room in a friend’s house in Florida. There were two couples and a comedy of errors happened, which led to a catastrophic evening. It was hilarious in some ways — I took the basic plot from there and developed it into a play. I got Ivan (Rodrigues) to write the script.”
Ashvin calls this comedy drama a hybrid mix of theatre and stand-up comedy. “Every minute, you will have people cracking up. There are situations, comedy timing, physicality and exciting lines. There’s also a good amount of interaction between the artistes,” he reveals.
Once the script was workshopped and auditioned for, Ashvin wrote the final draft around the actors chosen. “I wrote it according to their potential and I was able to leverage on their performance skill. I chose professional actors because there’s a certain amount that I leave under rehearsed, so the actor has an opportunity to evolve depending on his or her audience. The idea is to play to the audience,” he says.
For Suchitra, playing a character that’s totally different from her real self was a fun challenge. “I play Mallika Malhotra, who’s the wife of an ad executive. She’s possessive and is the type who wants to have her cake and eat it too. She nitpicks her husband’s brains, and complains,” says Suchitra, who reveals that she’s an easy-going person in real life.
As someone who’s visited namooru numerous times, Ashvin finds it a lovely city. “We’ve done lots of theatre here. We’ve done shows across the city in different spaces. This city is as cosmopolitan as Mumbai and Delhi. There is a potential of bringing Hindi theatre too here. We’ve taken some talent from Bengaluru and we feel very connected to the city,” opines Ashvin, who finds the theatre culture here very different. “We bring in a commercial approach to theatre and feel that people should pay for it. We hit out at a broader spectrum of audience. As a culture, people here want something new and fresh. B’luru is very high on comedy and music.”
To get a generous dose of side-splitting humour, head to MLR Convention Centre in Whitefield on August 28 at 7.30 pm.
