During the 70 minutes of its run time, Just Theatre’s Five Grains Of Sugar has only a single character on stage – Rajkumar, who in his own words, is an ordinary man leading an ordinary life in small town India.

Rajkumar spends those 70mins of the play narrating anecdotes from his unspectacular life to the audience.

Doesn’t sound too exciting does it? And yet, it’s a compelling, eminently satisfying play.

Munish Sharma, the actor who plays Rajkumar, has an easy charm and perfect comic timing, making Rajkumar a very likeable character. He describes with gusto his small world, full of people like a pseudo-intellectual poet uncle and a mother with a love for action films – and you’re completely drawn in.

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The Hindu (Bangalore) has a review of “Brief Candle” in the paper today. They aren’t too impressed with the play.

When Dattani directs his own plays he works with his actors to further tighten the script. One wishes that Lillette Dubey had taken this liberty because the script sounds clunky in many places.

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The promos of Brief Candle said:

‘Brief Candle’ is a play that addresses mortality yet highlights life, that emphasizes the importance of the quality of our lives rather than how long we live it. The play is a hilarious farce with some extremely funny situations revolving around a hotel room near the airport. As the characters in the play await their departures, which are delayed due to a storm, they end up in comic situations, as they entangle themselves in surreptitious dalliances and complicated love affairs.

This led me to expect dark comedy. The play turned out to be only distressingly bleak.

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For once, The Hindu (Bangalore) has more compliments for a play than me  (psst, they’re usually hard to please. See this and this for proof) . They are full of praise for the lead actors of “An Idiot For Dinner”, especially Sarvesh Sridhar,  and call it a must-watch play.

“An Idiot for Dinner” was engaging and the fact that it was showcased as a movie earlier, does not take away from the fun quotient. The sets and props were well done.

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For a remake, comparisons with the source are inevitable. The better the original is remembered and loved, the harder it is for the remake to come off well against it.

An Idiot For Dinner is at the end of a chain of remakes – a French play called Le Dîner de cons (The Dinner Game) was adapted into a French movie. Sagar Ballary took "inspiration" from there to make Bheja Fry. Then came Evam’s play An Idiot For Dinner.

Bheja Fry was most enjoyable for me. I had watched it without biases, unaware of the French original.

Not so, unfortunately, with An Idiot For Dinner.

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Silence! The Court Is In Session by playwright Vijay Tendulkar, was  originally written in Marathi as "Shāntatā! Court Chālu Aahe". It was staged for the first time in 1967, and has been translated into several languages and adapted by various theatre troupes over the years.

The play is a social satire on middle-class society, particularly its treatment of women. There are also telling asides, like the failed lawyer who takes to acting and the adopted son who is treated like an errand-boy.

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