A mad-dash , a sprinkling of luck and the last available ticket …………….

……………. and voila I got to watch Prashanth Nair’s cleverly penned “ROMEO AND JULIET” at the Rangashankara.

The plot which includes 4 puppets who are bound by strings and have played Shakespearean plays all their lives, decide to break free from their stings and perform Romeo and Juliet (their way) one last time before they can enjoy their newly found Freedom as what they like to call it.  What unfolded over the following 90 minutes is a intelligent volley of words that alternate between the ones Shakespeare penned all those years earlier and the words we get to hear at a coffee table in any office cafeteria or a college parking lot (“FIGURE KOUN HAI BE?” would be a good example of what I mean) 

The delightful connection built with the audience with references to Arnab Goswami’s painful tirade to the brainless hogwash namely “Chennai Express” kept the audience in splits. The narration by Chris and generously peppered with the excellent guitar playing if I may say so, is extremely effective in setting the tone for the entire play. Avinash Pathak is brilliant and I can safely say that laughs would be a lot lesser if not for him. His expressions and timing marks a talent to watch out for in the future. The multi-faceted Shashank Purushotham who plays Lord Capulet and Juliet’s nurse and Montague and the Friar and an angel and ARNAB GOSWAMI with surprising ease was a pleasure to watch.

The dance sequence which is a take on the famous balcony scene deserves a special mention here. The lighting is superb and the choreography beautifully executed. This sequence in particular took my breath away. Rijul Ray gives voice to Shakespearean words the way it should sound to our ears. His command over lines was something that didn’t go unnoticed.  Kalyani in her brief role was beautiful. Her highlight moment was ofcourse the balcony scene.

So in review , I spent a delightful evening laughing(for the greater part. A few moments of the play seemed a bit prolonged. Personally as a viewer, I would have just loved to see Juliet answer Panauti’s question 

I saw a puppy shaking water off himself after his bath this morning

…………….. wish I could shake this damn writers block off me in a similar way. I know I am scraping at the bottom of the idea barrel (with my extremely overdue for manicure hands nonetheless) when I am actually writing about the fact that I am not able to draft a blog. I’ve always considered that I am the cats pyjamas when it comes to my oratory skills (invariably every person who has ever offered me a job has heard me describe my “effective communication skills” listed under the strengths category) .

You see the problem is, I’m not much of a thinker. In the sense that I cannot come up with a creative thought overnight (even if you readily offered me all the oil in Saudi Arabia to burn), but give me someone else’s original thought and I can stretch it , modify it and otherwise extend it to a magnum opus (with my copious amounts of research thanks to my high speed internet connection at work). Once I’m done researching about it you should listen to me talk the donkeys hind leg off and while I’m at it, I can sometimes talk the arse off it too.

It’s a good thing this blog is anonymous , primarily because even though it is an illegal practice since 1750, I believe that there will be a witch hunt commissioned to find me and put a swift end to my ramblings once in for all if my identity was made public for even putting up posts of this nature.

How curiosity didn’t get this cool cat killed and other stories

Everywhere I saw in Paris I saw memorabilia that showcased cats … Big fluffy ones swishing their tails to small balls of fur peering with big eyes with their tails wound around them. And everywhere you see there is a particular big-black-as-thunder-cat with piercing eyes I might add, perched on a compound peering at you from postcards to magnets to posters to bookmarks. By the end of day 2 ….. I dont know if curiosity did anything to the cat but it definitely got the better of me and I ended up having an animated conversation with a French woman (in mime language mostly) who told me that the poster was of a very famous cabaret in Paris which was closed before 1900. Would have been cool to visit it if it was still open. Beaver was "more than" interested in visiting the Moulin Rouge up until his beedy eyes roved over the section explaining the entry fees  .......... Up until then, his formerly mentioned eyes were roving all over the poster of "the artists" performing at Moulin Rouge. 

 If cats were piping my curiosity in old Paree , It was donkeys when we reached Greece , to a point of overdrive … There were donkey keychains , donkey stuffed toys (I cannot imagine an Indian kid asking for a donkey soft toy) , donkey bags and what not. Didn’t remember to ask anyone what’s with Greeks and the love of donkeys??