With an imaginary canine, a mistrustful old widow, who seemed more Victorian than Indian, her son who is a doctor in Canada, two maid servants and a trusted friend, what seemed like a predictable story line in Wolfgang – had a twist at the end (which, however, was known to some only when the lights went off and the signature tune that was usually played after every scene did not come up).
Nevertheless, coming up with a play that made the audience laugh, applaud and think in eleven scenes and in close to two hours, Ajit Chitturi from Thespian en seems to have succeeded yet again in staging a play with 10 actors.
The scene starts with Mira Rajkumar (played by Malli Srinivas), an octogenarian widow living in Mumbai yelling at her servant maid to serve her breakfast and ranting about how it was different during her father’s times. She was found petting an imaginary dog — Wolfgang —that comes back in the last scene, surprisingly because issues with her daughter-in-law are resolved. How both of them are interlinked, was explained in a scene where drunken Mira reels off lines from a book she loved to read. (There were few puzzled looks — they just couldn’t get the connection)
Portraying snobbery and a certain level of mistrust while talking about domestic helpers and yet being too nice to do away with them, Malli essayed the protagonist with poise. Whether it was bad-mouthing her daughter-in-law, expressing her displeasure with the quality of work of her two helpers, having silly quirks such as buying saris she would never wear from a manipulative vendor who overcharges her, Malli played a pivotal role in a story woven around the mentality of Indian women across different economic classes.
Spicing up the unsurprising storyline, were the actors, even those playing the not-so-significant roles, who gave their best. Another plus, were the dialogues. A few particularly witty ones that made the audience crack up with laughter, were when Mira asked her Parsi friend Dinaz Irani if she’s heard of a particularly interesting book when the latter cluelessly replies, “I have stopped taking fertility pills ages ago,” with a shy smile as the two have similar names.