Playing Along

'Playing Along' is supposed to be a comedy, rather, a satire on plays as such. It consists of two parts, one being a series of 'sketches' and the other being a complicated story of love, betrayal and murder.

The five sketches are almost completely borrowed from Rowan Atkinson. The director later admits, quite rightly, that they weren't even 10% as good as Atkinson. I hope he didn't think he was being modest.

The love story is really terrible. A married woman is having an affair, and gets caught when the husband comes home, with a detective he kept handy for the occasion. So the treacherous couple plan to bump off the husband, but some back-stabbing happens and we see various combinations of the four players claiming to be a couple (yes, there's a gay one even. As if to say using the G word makes something funny. Bloody kids). The acting was atrocious. Long silences, drawn out jokes, gut-wrenching expressions, pathetic dialogue delivery. 'I DHON'T think so!' 'Are YHOU Mmaaad?' '.... THE TRuT.' Egads.

Ironically somewhere in the middle the devil shows up, and claims to decide to make the play interesting (Ultimately, he lets me down) by forcing the 'actors' to screw up. Screw up they do, and how! I think he did this to cover up the lack of talent and professionalism the crew displayed. Come to think of it, maybe the bad script and action was a part of the intended satire. How very deep! I have misunderstood this play.

Still, the guy who played the devil was decent. Good acting and all. Yet no one was laughing at the jokes he kept belting out. Some wise souls left in the middle of the play. I would have too, except my friend had a friend who was a member of the cast. So I stuck around. Actually, at some points I was laughing uncontrollably at the play. So in the end I did land up doing what I went there for.

The play supposedly originated in NIT Trichy. Now, beside me was this couple from NITT, whom I know from the cul fest circuit, specifically word games. The girl was quite peeved at my reaction. Apparently even she was part of the drama club there, and was around when this play was written. I couldn't quite understand why of all the plays NITT decided to export it was this one, as it casts a very poor light on the drama there. This was an award-winning play too!

The best part is, I paid a 100 bucks for this shit! Some guys in my coll had put up a play, which I was part of, which was way more entertaining than this. The three main actors were terrific together (this obviously excludes me). So we could have put up the play and milked everyone for a couple of thousands together and had a gala weekend after. Sheesh.

These plays are beginning to be quite disappointing, and quite a rip-off. Hope something better pops up soon.

Adieu NITK

An entire chapter of my life has ended. Four years is an unbelievably long time, especially at my age.

Well, lots of people say it's been the best four years of their lives. Unfortunately I don't share that sentiment. I've had a lot of great times, met a lot of fine people, done a lot of interesting stuff. But on the whole, I didn't achieve what I went to NITK for. So I'll always look back upon it with a bit of disappointment.

Still, whats done is done, and with this short note, I move on from this moment, forever.