...and sunshine follows the rain

Play: …And sunshine follows the rain. Inspired by Tennessee Williams’ “A Glass Menagerie”

The play was about fifty thousand years in the life of an Anglo-Indian family in post Independence India, not knowing which way to run in a country not run by the British. And that’s where the promise of a good play ends. The story goes something like this: (oh, by the way, I’m not scared of spoiling it for you or anything…there isn’t anything in the damn play to reveal…)

The father was a boozehound, and long before the play starts, the bugger just upped and left. Ran away to Australia or some place…the family lives on, starring one gossiping mother, one crippled daughter, and one son who wants to find his place under the sun, but can’t, since he has a bloody family to support…so far, so good…but for some strange, utterly inexplicable reason, the playwright decided to have more than one actors play the role of each character…which brings us to three goddamn people playing the son, and two each for the mother and daughter…yours truly spent the better part of two hours trying to figure out just why the heck does that symbolize, and I just couldn’t figure the bugger out…

Which brings me to two very simple words…those words are content and form. Or, in simpler words, “what do you want to say?” and “how do you want to say it”. It’s a very simple deal, really. A reason why a bugger puts up a blog, or writes in a paper, or makes a movie, or…you get the drift. Anyways, its coz he’s got something to say which he feels somebody might find interesting. Great, so our imaginary person’s got something to say, now the next question before him is this: what would be the best way to present his idea? Now this is the tricky part, coz this can either make or break your idea…take the latest episode of Munnabhai, for example. The idea was to introduce Gandhi to a generation who has no idea what he was all about. And what better way to do so than the method employed in the film? Its funny, its compact, and hence appeals to its viewers. The form and the content are always complementary. On the basis of the content only can a form be chosen. On the opposite end of the spectrum, this play makes a mockery of itself. When the content of the play did not require the form of more than one person playing a character, why the hell did he do it?

I’ll leave the bad play at that…