“I can’t believe I spent those 9 months of mine in brine..."

“I can’t believe I spent those 9 months of mine in brine…
and Olives. If not for their uncertain origin, I would actually eat them.”

Wondering? Well these were lines of Giovanni, the protagonist of “Can’t Pay! Won’t Pay!”.
Before I get into the details of the play…

Half the fun is in getting there…Isn’t it? So here goes...

Aware of the code that the gates would be closed by 7:30 p.m., we (me & K) left office early. From the strong petrichor cooked and from the beautiful rainbow painted by you-know-who, I knew he was right behind us. The past five evenings of storm, thunder and lightning had made him predictable. So much so, that I have even made a calendar entry in Outlook. “Meeting with Mr.You-Know-Who. Location: Bangalore. Time: 7:00 p.m. – 9 p.m.”. Since we (me & you-know-who) have an IST synchronized calendar entry, just as the reminder comes up on my screen “Ding”, it precipitates on him that, it’s time he took the leak, and off he starts pelting poor Bangalore.

Coming back to where I was, I had no intentions of sitting through a play in the air-conditioned auditorium for two hours, squirming with wet jeans, soaking feet and a dripping T-shirt. Fearing this, I stepped up the gear and put my foot on the gas pedal. Zoooooooom we went. (before you put a picture to it, its better I tell you that it was only an auto-trans scooterette).

“Ranga Shankara”, it was called. The first impression I built from the name was somehow equivalent to the one I had after reading “Satyabama Engineering College” in “UG colleges that I could join” list (I had no intentions of being associated with it for four years. It would have been even worse if it had found a place in my resume, for life. My reflex action was: Satyabama. Satyabama-ites, please disconnect your heart from the web, take no offence). When K shared this same opinion (about Ranga Shankara) with me, the reply I gave her was a totally different one.
“Hey, don’t you dare! Ranga Shankara sounds just like Kripa Shankar. And nothing is wrong with it.”

“What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” - William Shakespeare
That reminds me…
I will take yet another detour here. Last week I saw this film titled “Kya Cool Hai Hum”. Its very easy to share my experience with you. All you have to do is:
Step 1: Take a huge piece of ginger (who after taste will last for 3 hours).
Step 2: Put it in your mouth.
Step 3: Go look at yourself in the mirror.
That’s exactly how I was throughout the movie. There was this one dialogue in the movie that stayed in my mind though. It’s between Tushar Kapoor and his manager and it goes like this:

TK: Sir, here are my designs.
M: Good.
TK: Will you put my name on these, this time atleast.
M: Don’t you know that William Shakespeare said: “What's in a name?”
TK: Yes Boss, I do. But even below that quote he put his name. Didn’t he?

Returning to the main road. Hmm…ya, we reached the place, and went searching for this person named JAM for our tickets. Thanks to Mr.S that we got to book tickets in advance. We didn’t have to search for long, as we found a person at the entrance with a bunch of tickets, two of which had our names on it. Peace.

We entered the hall, well before the first bell and took our seats at the front. I was impressed with the place. My friend quoted again: “It is such a stupid name for such a nice place”. True. It was a small auditorium that could house 300 (we actually counted the people in each row and the number of rows..LOL!). Dim lit. Wall of bricks painted in black and dark brown. I had the all the three things that it needed: the air, the ambience and the audience. I liked the rules they wanted audience to adhere to; like – switching off mobile phones, being punctual and entering the hall before the third bell, not taking eatables inside and stuff like that. You know how annoying it gets when you are trying to concentrate and imbibe the words that are being spoken and you hear the ringtone of the “Manmada Raasa”s, or the crunch-munch-glurg-burp. Since it was a small theatre it did not need the artificiality of the microphones. Lights, music, sound effects all were exactly of one kind, "mild, pacifying and soothing".

Now about the play. It was actually a work by Dario Fo. To sum it up in a paragraph:

Fed up with high prices in the supermarket? (Antonia)

Frustrated by constant strikes? (Giovanni)

Frantic at rising train prices? (Luigi)

Take the law into your own hands!

That’s the message it conveyed.

Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! was a hilarious, sharply satirical take on individual responsibility and politics, challenging today’s audience to abandon political cynicism and take to the streets. It depicts working class women who have rebelled against the cost of living by taking goods from a store without paying. The plot concerns their efforts to conceal their bold decisions from their men folk and the police who are blundering figures of fun.

Vijay Arvind’s portrayal of Giovanni was outstanding and natural, and Surabhi Herur (Antonia – Giovanni’s wife) carried herself fluently across the verbose and long-winding sentences that her character had to deliver. Malathi Nayak’s (Marguerita) “Hoooaaauuuuuwwwww” version of the word “How” that she kept crying kept bringing the laughs.

The poster presents a few scenes from the play, like the women trying to hide the stolen goods from the super market in their bellies (In one of the scenes Marguerita and Antonia try covering up their steal from Giovanni by announcing that Marguerita is suffering from labour pains and it leads on to a situation where a packet in her stuffed belly breaks and it starts leaking brine and olives…That explains the title of the blog. Read it again. Haaahhhhaaaahhhhaa).

There was this other scene where Giovanni and his friend Luigi (played by Sanjeev Nair) are running away from the police on a bicycle. They actually managed to get a real bicycle on stage and Giovanni was cycling (with the stands on) at such a pace that I was waiting for the stand come off. Instead of enjoying the scene, my eyes were focused on the hinge in the stand and I was expecting a crash. Good for them that no such thing happened. In fact the stand was so strong that they had trouble taking it off even when they had to drive the cycle off the stage.

All in all it was very good play for a good cause too (as the proceedings went to a charity organization named Dream-A-Dream).

I managed to get a few pictures of the same play enacted at the Derby Playhouse by a different group though. Those who have seen the play, rewind, play, reminisce, and enjoy.

^ Antonio & Marguerita

^ Giovanni, Inspector and Luigi

^ Giovanni and Luigi in a moment of peril

I came out of the theatre, and saw that my old pal, you-know-who was awaiting my return. He had tired down after waiting for 2 whole hours. Though a mere drizzle now, he was cold enough to make my ride back home a teeth-chattering, goose-bumpy one. Nature always has the last laugh doesn’t it?