Theatrecian tickled the city’s funny bone with a production of The Comedy Kitchen in Gyan Manch, after two-and-a-half years. The nine short plays, which had the audience roaring and rolling, presented an ensemble cast in which the comic stars of the show were undisputedly Dhruv Mookerji and Apratim Chatterjee. In the old-school humour of Charlie Chaplin or Bhanu Banerjee, these two can have you doubling over without a word. It’s all in the stance, the flick of the eyebrow or an unblinking stare. Of course a punch-line laden script by Mookerji might make you crack a rib anyway.
“Theatrecian was the first to do an online play, in this country, when the pandemic hit us. The Comedy Kitchen is our first play in the physical space, in Kolkata. It was awesome to see the immediate response from the audience. It is the laughter that motivates us,” said Tathagata Chowdhury, who could be seen in the hall when he wasn’t on stage.
Here are some haha-moments from the night…
Mastermind India 1
In Mastermind India 1, Arush Sengupta plays a brilliant participant who has the curious knack of answering the previous question instead of the current one. The result is of course a hilariously ironic comedy of errors.
To Be or Wannabe
To Be or Wannabe has little dialogue and rides entirely on silent humour. The one-upmanship between two men plays out with the aid of props and the comical body language of Dhruv Mookerjee and Apratim Chatterjee. “I played a blind man with no lines in the first comedy skit I performed with Theatrecian in 2010. Over the last decade, I’ve discovered that the art of comedy comes naturally to me, but I do like playing the more serious roles as well. It was so great to see a full house in Kolkata and hear non-stop laughter and applause for 90 minutes. It really felt like we were back with bang!” smiled Chatterjee. Spot him in the movie, Uma, by Srijit Mukherji.
The Fact Collector
"Did you know that a mosquito can survive a whole year on a grain of rice?" Dhruv Mookerji is The Fact Collector who knows little despite his hobby of reading up on boring trivia. A hapless stranger (Arush Sengupta) finds himself beleaguered by this ignorant connoisseur of information collector. He loses his patience and fills out a crossword erroneously, much to the amusement of an audience who feels the thrill of knowing all the answers.
Cure Ho Gaya Na?
Mookerji and Chatterjee rake up the howls in Cure Ho Gaya Na? The sketch serves as a commentary on mercenary doctors and the jack-of-all-trades attitude popular in current times. From the self-important Bengali man, Mookerji does a seamless accent switch to a smooth-tongued, conniving practitioner-of-many-professions in this one.
Fatal Beatings
Dipanwita Chatterjee is the gobsmacked mother in Fatal Beatings, where the principal of her son’s school, played by Apratim Chatterjee, unapologetically informs her that he has beaten her errant child to death. Literally. He even manages to make it her fault for bringing him up to be such a weakling! Dipanwita, starkly the sole female character in a male-dominated line-up, inhabits her various roles convincingly between skits, whether as a love interest or a cheating quiz show participant.
The Men with Bad Memories
The Men with Bad Memories set the tone for the evening. A man who wants to be cured of his inability to remember a single thing (Dhruv Mookerji,) finds himself a doctor (Apratim Chatterjee) who can remember even less. Forgotten trousers and shock therapy are the high points of this hilarious interaction between doctor and patient.
Sad Life
Sad Life has Rwikjit Roy playing a loser who wins spectacularly at being a loser during a meeting with his boss (Mookerji). “The Comedy Kitchen juggernaut has been rolling for over a decade. When we started off in 2010, we did something called The Night of Comedy. It had 3-4 pieces as part of a double act with another play. Then expanded the set, changed the name to The Comedy Kitchen and began rolling in 2011. The aim was to do one new piece every time we performed. That meant adapting new pieces or writing new ones. Our high point was performing at the Canvas Laugh Factory in Mumbai on New Year’s Day 2013, to a standing ovation," said Dhruv Mookerji.
