The paucity of local organizations sponsoring shows from outside Kolkata makes us greet any such new initiative enthusiastically. Knack Productions may feel disheartened by the low turnout for Akvarious Productions’ Internal Affairs from Mumbai, but any fresh venture needs time to establish itself as theatre-friendly in the public consciousness. Besides, it would not have hurt to advertise important information, notably that this production has had over 80 performances across India.
Another interesting detail about Internal Affairs (but only for serious theatre buffs) is that the scriptwriters, Adhir Bhat and Bobby Nagra, got their inspiration from a young Scottish dramatist, D. C. Jackson, whose My Romantic History caught attention at the Edinburgh Fringe a few years ago. We should always keep up our awareness of recent successes abroad. Although Bhat-Nagra have Indianized it, they retain the basic situation and structure of Jackson’s play. Two office colleagues meet and get drunk at a party, leading to a one-night stand, after which the man wants to extricate himself from the relationship but the woman wants it to continue.
Overworked on both stage and screen, this is too mundane and unappealing a premise. Without sounding moralistic or judgmental, how many of us care to learn more about a couple who could have prevented the predictable by exercising control at the outset? The man’s one-sided narration, often addressing the audience in confidence, also reeks of male chauvinism, making the first half a turn-off. Then, unexpectedly, we hear the same events told from the woman’s perspective, which, even though we have encountered such rewind techniques before, layers more complexity to the text and holds us in the second half.
Adhaar Khurana directs a youthful quartet in normal, flat portrayals, the everyman/everywoman representations of Priyanshu Painyuli and Dilshad Edibam deglamourized yet stylized by both wearing white shirts and blue jeans. Hussain Dalal and Shikha Talsania double up as the rest of the people in their lives – a task of differentiating at which the versatile Dalal excels, from Painyuli’s homophobic grandfather (even if caricatured) to Edibam’s intellectual first boyfriend. The bare-bones set further emphasizes the ordinariness of the circumstances. But if obligatory inebriation and casual sex have become the Friday-night routine in globalized India, can they form a stable foundation for commitment or love? The end leaves me unsure whether Internal Affairs exploits the situation for entertainment or interrogates the social trend.
(From The Times of India, 24 August 2018)