The dilemma of business. How would one make a profit while everything else seems to work against them? By selling your soul, that’s how.
Perch’s Vyabaramayanam, directed by Rajiv Krishnan, had two narrators who took it upon themselves to narrate the the goings-on behind the scenes of a business. Hilariously satirising the art of business, the Tamil play, which was staged in the city over the weekend, made one think over and over again with its honesty and and humanity.
Aided ably by the intimate setting of Spaces, at Elliot’s Beach, Mu Ramaswamy and Anandsami sang, dance and left the audience eating out of their hands. Starting with a noisy debate about theism and atheism, existential matters, the narrators searched for a topic to narrate to the audience. After countless arguments, they decided to talk about business. They set up a company, invent a product, do some advertising and devise marketing strategies designed to make a fool of the consumers.
With witty dialogues and even wittier pop culture references carefully scattered here and there, the audience had something to relate to at every step — there was a dialogue here, a ditty there and a couple of crass words in between that made several in the audience titter away. Ecological problems the world is facing currently make up a big chunk of the play’s sublimal message.
The play can almost be called a political satire. Here’s a sample - Ecological problems? Let’s learn to eat the plastic like the cows have learned and turn it into compost. Demand-supply problems? Let’s create some demand by false advertising. Issues with sales? Let’s make up some numbers. The duo had a solution for everything. Nellai Manikandan on the music proved to be the perfect counterbalance to the narrators.
With colourful costumes and painted faces, Ramaswamy and Anandsami had the audience in splits by the end of the play. And it took only one look at their faces after the lights came back on to know that they were thinking. For the actors, that is the biggest compliment they can get.