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Laughter all the way
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Neil Simson's play, to be staged at Alliance Francaise later this week, takes a comic view of the state of the television industry and the rise of game shows. It is Artists Repertory Theatre's 20th anniversary offering to the City's theatre buffs.
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From `Laughter on the 23rd Floor'.
AS ALWAYS in Bangalore, either the theatres lie vacant and empty, longing for audience, or there is a spurt of activity, when all the theatre groups decide to stage productions, giving the theatre audiences more than just a variety to choose from.
The Rajas, Arundhati and Jagdish Raja this time, restless with inactivity, decided to pick up a Neil Simon that had been collecting dust for sometime. Although slightly apprehensive whether the play would sound good, a reading with a much younger cast cleared all their initial doubts.
Laughter on the 23rd Floor, unlike other Neil Simon's plays, both in terms of style and language, is set in the writer's room that churns out NBC's highest grossing comedy of the 1950s, The Max Prince Show.
With the sets, music, and ambience designed to recreate the early 1950s, the dialogue brings alive the early days of television and comedy shows. Big show names such as Walter Cronite, Sid Ceasar, and Max Prince have been inspiration for its style.
During 1953, popularly referred to as the McCarthy era, the time the cold wars were setting in, was also the age that saw the rise of the anti-communists.
Although Hollywood was their major target, television was also hit, though, to a lesser degree.
Those were times when one-hour weeklies were being substituted by game shows and beauty pageants. The power of television covering a larger viewing territory was being discovered. The networks were vying for national audiences and variety shows were losing popularity. The threat of competition and the spectre of McCarthism and censorship formed an ominous, yet, uncannily relevant backdrop to this hilarious, fast paced, one-joke-per-line comedy.
Written by one of America's funniest and most prolific playwrights, the play recreates the mayhem, neurosis, non-stop gags and constant one upmanship of this brilliant team of writers. It is not the usual Neil Simon play, but with his hilarious, racy dialogue, this partly autobiographical script rolls along.
The play, introduced at the right time, draws our attention to the prevailing state of the television industry, the rise of game shows, and the much talked about reality television.
The Artists Repertory Theatre celebrates 20 years of theatre with the Indian premier of this play.
The production has new faces and old. Shiva Subramanium as Max Prince, his team of writers include Jagdish Raja, Ashish Prabhakar, Prakash Iyengar, Gaurav Kumar, Arati Punwani, Kapil Arora, Anshul Chodha, and Sabrina Malhotra as his secretary.
The lighting is handled by Prerna Kaul and sound is by Harsha Dandapani.
The production is directed by Arundhati Raja and assisted by Ruchika Chanana. Anandi Chowriappa has designed the sets for the play.
The performance is scheduled for March 22 and 23, at Alliance Francaise, 7.30 p.m..
Tickets for Laughter on the 23rd Floor are priced at Rs. 99. They are available at the Coffee Shop, at Alliance Francaise.
MONISHA VARADAN
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