Cast: Sandeep Sikhand, Sameer Soni, Tanaaz Karim, Daisy Rani, Raj Krishnamurthy and Madhuri
Produced and Co-Directed: Sandeep Sikhand
Directed: Tanaaz Karim
There is no defending Tanaaz Karim's Ask What Father Says enacted in the Secunderabad Club on Saturday evening. No argument can be advanced to justify it and no insight can coax meanings out of its amateurish attempt at portraying the carefree attitude of the youth.
Avinash Advani (Sameer Soni), on the other side of thirty, is a yuppie whose lifestyle perfectly reflects the attitude of the upwordly mobile youth of Mumbai - babes, booze and basking in the backwaters of the beautiful beaches... This hunk of a guy, who throws the family business to the winds, has only one passion - unwinding for five days after putting in work of least persistence in office for two days.
As if it's not bad enough that the father, L K Advani (Sandeep Sikhand), has to put up with this wasted son, his other son Buddy Advani (Raj Krishnamurthy) is on the other side of stupidity - a bum to the core. This guy with the least IQ imaginable wants to break free from his father, and so runs away from home and goes to live with his elder brother - the big bum as his father calls him.
The play moves on between the father and his two bums and an equally crazy wife, Jaya Advani (Daisy Rani), till it reaches a logical culmination - of the bums realising their folly. The play takes a subtle dig at the lifestyle of the metropolitan guys of conning babes into submission with their sweet talk - the extent to which they go to pursue their careers, even willing to sleep with their promoters, the silly social niceties, and the like.
Till then it is okay. But the play goes on and on without caring where it is headed, and the result is that we are subjected to an extra hour of unnecessary boredom, all because unlike a film it doesn't have an editor. And finally when the play comes back to where it has begun it is already too late. It would have been a nice idea if the play had been performed at a college or university annual function and not at a prestigious gathering like that at the Secunderabad Club. For it appeals only to the giggling generation, and not to the elite.
Sameer Soni is the best of the lot, and performs effortlessly. Raj Krishnamurthy gets on to your nerves after some time with his silly mannerisms. Daisy Rani and Sandeep Sikhand are good, but the play is so long (two hours) that monotony creeps in and their good work gets undermined. Tanaaz Karim appears in a brief role, and so does Madhuri as the aspiring Bollywood actress, and they both carry themselves well.
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