Darshan Jariwala has been phoning in mediocre performances in mediocre Bollywood comedies for so many years now it’s hard to believe that he can fire up the floorboards. Jariwala’s Gidwani hops onto the stage after three of the seven monologues that comprise Kapadia’s new play Bombay Talkies to deliver a tirade on the perils of trying to be honest. He is loud and profane, but he carries the audience with him from his first syllable. Perhaps matching the calibre of its experienced performer, Gidwani’s lengthy whine about trying to please Sonia and resist paying bribes to get his passport renewed is the strongest piece in the collection. It doesn’t say anything we don’t already know, but it’s well said.

Jariwala enters the production like a well-timed gag just when the play is threatening to induce yawns. It is preceded by monologues by Nimrat Kaur (she will alternate with Rasika Dugal), Ishitta Arun and Viraj Phiroz Patel (alternating with Joy Sengupta). The bar gets lowered after the interval with the pieces performed by Devika Shahani-Punjabi, Namit Das, Anahita Uberoi and Zafar Karachiwalla. Kaur’s former child actor and Patel’s nostalgic Bandra boy point to the deceptiveness of nostalgia, while Arun and Uberoi represent two faces of the urban woman (one is neurotic and the other is lonely). Das’s “navratri is the season for sex” wisdom is about as imaginative as Shahani- Punjabi’s clueless television reporter who discovers the “real India” after quitting her job. It’s not all banal or predictable. The moment in the futuristic concluding piece, when all the actors who are standing like statues behind Zafar Karachiwalla’s suicidal Mumbaiite suddenly break into a Hindu prayer, is truly startling. Give us clichés any day. 

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