Staged

 I watched Mahesh Manjrekar's play ‘Animal’ at NCPA yesterday. That auditorium holds special significance for me, as for anyone who studied in town. When tickets at Sterling were too expensive, or all the tickets were sold out at Eros, you trawled to NCPA for cheap but classy plays. After the play, you sat at Marine Drive and took in the skyline, twinkling and hazy like colored ice-cubes in a cocktail glass. Then you ate an ice-cream sandwich at Rustomjee on the way to Churchgate, and dashed for a late train home.

Coming back to the play itself. It borrows its title from Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s film by the same name. It’s the story of a man who leaves his village to come to Mumbai to be in movies. He doesn’t make it despite great rationalizations. It’s not a greatly original story, and if you’ve read a bit of Maugham, you see the beats of psychological realism, etc.

For a long part, the play goes on ad nauseum. It’s only Manjrekar ranting and giving soliloquies about how human beings are the real ‘animals’.  There is some humble-brag with references to his friendship with Sandeep Reddy, etc. I was getting annoyed with the vanity project that this play was turning out to be. Several people left during the play. (When I was in college, you were not allowed to walk in late or leave in the middle of a performance at NCPA, Prithvi, Shanmukhananda Hall, etc.)

But after you have marinated in the slow burn for a while, the play picks up. It is so elegantly nihilistic towards its denouement. Weird, wordless, wonderful.

The set design (which comprises multiple kinds of smoke spewing from different outlets) starts to gain credence.

If you are a native of the city, you can figure out what area you are in from the color of the smog. The elitism in the air is quite literal. And when you travel to Nariman Point from the suburbs, you get it. When I walk up from Ambedkar Road to Pali Hill, I see it. When I move from SV Road to the lanes of JVLR, the release in the nervous system is palpable.

The hierarchy of the value of life is so entrenched that you don’t notice it until someone shows it to you on stage under arc lights, as atmospheric to a character’s narcissistic ramblings.

During the curtain call, Mahesh Manjrekar talks a bit about what makes this play difficult. He was the only character in the play who had a speaking part. The others didn’t. Yet at the end of the play, it is their performance that actually stays with you – like the color of the smog.

I have always liked Manjrekar’s movies, but this play surfaced a bit of a reader in him. It takes a certain sensibility to notice the suffocation in words and movement. Like that rare client in eLearning who sees the value of a well-written static screen over animation. In fact, that breed of client who can actually appreciate quiet design is fast becoming an endangered species. That’s why a garrulous director honoring the value of silent spaces in drama was fresh.

Not quite animalistic.