The Eccentrics’ Facebook page reads — ‘They’re a group of 20-somethings attempting to bring a fresh voice to the theatre scene.’ With the entire cast and crew of their play, The Uprising being under 25, one’s expectations get completely thrown out of the window.
Well, who else would have thought to make a tragicomedy of the Indian quest for Indian Independence? Or that the solution to the problem was not violence, but er, cross-dressing? Bizarre as it may sound, The Uprising is quirkily funny, keeping you hanging on to find out just how exactly this play ends.
There are a number of characters in the play that are as eccentric as the group’s name suggests. A general who cannot decide whether he is alcoholic or simply incompetent; a captain who loves violence; an Indian accountant with a distinct feminine tinge to his mannerisms; three well-meaning fools who want to ‘rebel’. The cast lives up to the whimsical nature of the play, keeping the momentum going — there’s not a disinterested sound from the audience, most of whom were also really young.
Roshan Mathew as the alcoholic British general, stole the show with his booming voice and crazy expressions, while Vidyuth Gargi as the violence-loving Captain Lovelock, provided the perfect foil to him. Karthikeyan Mathivannan as the accountant completed the triad of best actors on the stage. The music, composed out of scratch by Vidyuth, matched the mood perfectly with the audience cheering for all the fun bits. The only thing that stood out more was the lovely lighting by Rahul Ramesh and the direction by Ujwal Nair.
One and a half months of intense rehearsals seemed to have paid off as the cast and crew bowed to a rousing applause by the audience. No one but a bunch of crazy youngsters could have pulled off such a whimsical script. It was truly theatre ‘of, by and for the young people’