It’s a small but receptive audience at the Alliance Française auditorium in Chennai, where Bangalore-based Barking Dog is performing Neil Simon’s The Good Doctor . The performance and the laughter are both on cue, with no real surprises. Neil Simon has become pretty much a staple on the theatre scene and his one-liners can usually be trusted to carry the day if nothing else suffices.
The Good Doctor, of course,is not a full play, but a series of early sketches that Neil Simon did as a sort of homage to Anton Chekhov “before getting on to bigger things”. The pieces are linked by the character of the writer (Chekhov) and the skits are pieces he has written, a ploy that director N. Rishi exploits rather well, with the writer, rapt in inspiration, busily jotting in his notebook and mouthing the dialogues even as the actors simultaneously play out the roles.
The sketches themselves are uneven in quality, a fact that Neil Simon has acknowledged, and this evening the unevenness of the script (and its datedness) is somewhat exacerbated by the inadequacies of the production. It doesn’t, however, take away from the performance of lead actor Prateek Prajosh, who is excellent as the writer. A natural, with easy movements, a mobile face and a nice way of delivering his lines, he does a great job. The rest of the cast is competent. Rishi is funny as the sexton having his tooth pulled out by a quack, and Mohan Ram is best in his role as General Brassilhov. Clearly, a lot is expected from Deepak Hariharan, who plays some key roles — the seducer charming the married woman; the hobo willing to drown himself for three kopeks; and the young boy hauled off to a prostitute by a concerned father who wants him to learn about the birds and the bees. Not all of it works, though. Deepak has too young a face and manners to pull off roles such as that of a sophisticated rake and does the simpleton sneezer role better.
And what is that interlude where Deepak and Shraddha Srinath play an ageing couple who meet on a park bench and break into song? It looks suspiciously like it was dragged in to showcase some singing talent and is totally unconvincing. Among the women, Shraddha overdoes the haughty expression and one gets tired of it after a while; while Sindhu Sreenivasa Murthy as the shrewish woman who terrorises the bank manager overplays the role, coming across more as a demented creature than a scheming woman who uses tears and shrieks to telling effect.
But most of all, what one realises after an evening like this is the tragic paucity of contemporary Indian scripts and plays. In 2012, when there is cutting-edge work in Indian cinema and other arts, why is urban English theatre revisiting clichéd 18 century situations set in Russia presented second-hand via an American playwright? I would understand if it came from their parents, but not when it’s from this young, talented and brave theatre company, whose two linchpins have actually given up enticing corporate careers for professional theatre.
In fact, the story of Barking Dog is vastly more interesting. Vikram Hemanathan tells me that he and partner Rishi are confident that their company will soon be fully financially viable; he speaks of how they started with all of Rs. 5,000; he tells me they are already doing well enough to pay for actors and sets. This is impressive. Now, let’s wait for this youthful team (average age below 21) to soon come up with a relevant, funky, and way-out production. Something tells me they well might.
