The Last Leaf

Last weekend, struck in Bangalore, a huge bunch of KREC (former and present) inmates descended on Ranga Shankara to catch a rendition of O'Henry's short story titled "The Last Leaf". With memories of "Deep Fried Jam" still afresh in all our minds, the last thing we were game for was another of its kind!! Fervently praying that this play would match up to the last couple I had seen here ("Translations" and "BandawaLa illada baDayi"), I waited expectantly for the play to begin.

It was a packed house. No doubts about that. Crowds from far and wide (yeea rite!) had gathered in this theater hoping to drift away in time to old Greenwich village, a long time ago. Start, it eventually did. But, those (including me) who did not have a whiff of the story beforehand and were eager to get the characteristic O'Henry punch at the end of the play were in for a BIGGGGG disappointment!!! (Not that the ones who knew the story were happy!!! )

The narration began in a broken, Indian-accented English causing much debate among us. Some opined that it was Kandu-English, while others thought it to be Marathi-English and what not!! Bottomline, the accent sucked BIG TIME and put us off at the word 'Go'. But what the hell was he narrating?? THE ENTIRE STORY, for Goodness' sake!!! Within two minutes of us listening to him (the narrator, director blah blah), he had blurted out the entire story!!! That was a punch in itself!!!

So, a few of us guessed that we had paid fifty bucks to hear the story in as sad an accent as it was presented in, and prepared to leave. That would have been so much better!!! When a bunch of uncordinated dancers occupied front-stage and strutted their stuff, along with the realization that this was a supposed 'musical' came the sinking feeling of being taken for a ride again........

Not that I have anything against musicals or dancers or theater. Give me a decent presentation and I will take it with no qualms. But THIS .......... this was just beyond words ....... this wasn't the last leaf ... it was the LAST STRAW!!!! To borrow a line from Joey Tribbiani of Friends' fame, " I wanted to rip my arm off so that I have something to throw at them!!!".

The background singing was as bad as the narration, probably worse since we had to contend with it a lot more. Getting a Kannada singer to sing English lines for you is the biggest mistake a director can make. Given a choice, I would listen to the famous "Eeeeeeeeeeef youv caam todai" a hundred times than listening to this guy sing for the play!!!

(For those of you who don't know what the famous song is, check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIcA4aV86Sg

Its a Kannada movie song, fully in English .... The movie is Operation Diamond Rocket ... starring the evergreen Annavru - Dr. Raj!! With such a song, he is definitely unforgattable!!)

Getting back to Ranga Shankara .......
With such bad singing, the dancers couldn't be blamed for the uninspiring performance - or am I letting them off too easy?? The only positive word I can probably use to describe the dance without betraying the truth, is 'uplifting' - just because it just involved a MS Dhoni lookalike 'lifting up' everyone who came his way!!!!

And finally the actors .... yes; they were there too. Sue was good as she had nothing to do but lie in the bed and act like she was going to die any minute, Johnsy was better - a good English accent and talent - though it was funny seeing her suddenly break into a dance!! The painter Behrman was my favourite .... he made it look like I was in a play I paid for and not being forced to sit through a irrehersed conglomeration of supposed acting by a bunch of college idiots. (Thats what the rest were)

The real turn off was the Doc's paunch!! Even KREC mock dramas have people with better paunches!!! This guy's paunch was in a wierd shape - making it so very obvious that it was fake. He could have as well stuffed a few books under his shirt and tried to pass it off for a tummy .... or maybe thats what he did!!!

It was probably the last couple of minutes that I felt good during the entire torture session - the part depicting Behrman's death was well presented ... or maybe I had gotten used to mediocre performances ... or rather I was very happy that the play would end soon .......

To summarise, the fact that a quarter of the audience walked out before the completion of the play at Ranga Shankara (where such audience behavior is frowned upon) bears testimonial that this isnt a prejudiced ranting against the cast or the director .... What the hell, I even yelled "What an awesome performace it was!!" when the director passed by so that he would feel at least one person liked it!!!