When a play has been declared ‘Housefull’ two weeks before it is being staged, you know its fame has preceded it. I would not have got to watch Atul Kumar’s The Blue Mug either (The last ticketed show is today at Delhi’s Kamani Auditorium), if it had not been for the intervention of a common friend who got me passes to a private viewing last Saturday.
I reached an hour early, hoping to grab the best seats in a ‘free seating’ auditorium, but am side-tracked when I overhear a family animatedly discussing their only chance to see “Vinay Pathak in real life!”
“I have no clue what the play is about. I am here to see the stars,” says Prakash Singh, a retired bank professional who has come along with his wife, daughter-in law and grandchildren. “We all came because there are filmy people in the play.” I would have been amused at his child-like excitement if similar sentiments had not been shared by more people waiting patiently at the gate. “I rarely go to plays,” says Vinayak Bhandari, a 21-year-old law student, “but when I received the passes for this play, it was the cast that attracted me.”
The Blue Mug, as this website has already reported, is about memories – some happy, some painful; sometimes silly, at times profound; some that we change and others that impact us – which make us who we are. Narrated through life experiences made up of several intimate moments and feelings, it’s a play that would have still found a connection irrespective of its cast. But this is Delhi, a city that can create massive road jams and at worse stampedes to catch a mere glimpse of a film celebrity, and here was a stellar cast of Vinay Pathak, Rajat Kapoor, Ranvir Shorey and Sheeba Chadha.
So when Kaustubh, a young theatre enthusiast, who is himself part of a drama company Dramanon says that “just like mainstream cinema where blockbusters are often dependent on big names, it always helps for a play to have a cast drawn from films,” he may have summed up most of the crowd that day.
Inside the auditorium, by now, the chattering has quietened a bit. Still, I can hear faint whispers from behind me. “Isn’t Sheeba in some TV serial also?” “Rajat Kapoor… pata nahin real mein kaisa hoga,” “I am waiting to hear some jokes from Vinay Pathak.”
But, as each actor claims the stage, very soon it’s not about who or how big the star is. It’s about who is making you laugh with an anecdote that seems like a page out of your own childhood. It’s about who can make you melancholic with the memory of a lost parent. It’s about who that person is, on stage and inside you.
The audience breaks into a loud applause every time Ranvir Shorey shines on stage, in the role of a middle-aged man who has lost his immediate memory but can still crack you up with his rustic Punjabi, or when Pathak breaks into mimicry of a paranoid Bihari uncle. And sometimes a hush descends – as Chadha speaks of a childhood – a time of innocence and alienation, or when Kapoor moans the loss of his favourite blue mug, perhaps symbolic of everything we hold dear and true.
One hour, 30 minutes later, as we move out of the auditorium, I notice there is not a single person who does not have a wistful smile or a moist eye. In the end, it’s the play that wins. The cast is only a series of names on a paper pamphlet.
Poonam Goel is a freelance journalist and has covered the arts for over 15 years. She contributes on visual arts for various newspapers, magazines and online media. More about her on Story Wallahs. Write to her @
poonamgoel2410@gmail.com
Catch the closing shows of The Blue Mug in Mumbai
Rangasharda (Bandra Reclamation)
6th Aug, Saturday, 8 pm
7th Aug, Sunday, 8 pm
Bookings: www.bookmyshow.com (022-39895050)
Tickets also available at Rhythm House (022-43222701) & at gate