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The movies ruin the book - as proved by
hundreds of cinema across the world. Looks like plays too can
wreck the book. Joining the bandwagon is Chetan Bhagat’s super
seller, Five Point Someone, which was recently staged as a play
by Madras Players, in partnership with Evam.
Nikhila Kesavan’s adaptation of the book and
direction of the play were good, the characters did their parts
well and the story had smooth sailing… so what went wrong?
Though it was called Five Point Someone, the
play often lost focus and the audience required reminding that
the subject dealt with was the life of five pointers at IIT.
“There should have been a better cast selection,” says Prachi
Sibal, a theatre enthusiast. “Though the actors individually did
their roles well, they did not resemble the characters described
in the book the least bit,” she says, adding, “Only Professor
Veera was portrayed like in the book.”
Five Point Someone is the story of three IITians who mess up
their lives completely, ending up as five pointers (the lower
average, ranked on a scale of ten). Alok and Ryan were born with
entirely opposite traits and poor Hari is made the mediator to
all their petty quarrels. Apart from the three screwing up their
quizzes, Hari falls in love with their most dreaded professor’s
daughter and gets drunk for a viva as per Ryan’s suggestion.
Being mediocre students, their only way to get a decent job is
to score properly in their semesters and at this rate, the only
way to do that is, to know the questions beforehand. So there
formulates Operation Pendulum! What happens next and why and how
did they come to this consensus forms the story line.
Why ‘Five Point Someone’ of all books? "'Five Point Someone’ is
set in contemporary urban India, the milieu that I belong to and
hence deeply relate to,” says Nikhila. “While it is a story
about 'what not to do at IIT', I believe, at one level, ‘Five
Point Someone’ is the tale of every student in this country.”
V Sarvesh Sridhar as Alok Gupta gave an astounding performance,
bringing out emotions from the depth of his heart. He was one
with the role he played and his sentimental dialogue delivery
really touched the soft spots of human hearts. Praveen Bharadwaj
playing Ryan Oberoi did justice to his role as the freaky, cool
dude who cared nothing for the world. P C Ramakrishna as
Professor Cherian looked formal and professional in his role and
his years of experience with acting really showed.
While acting came naturally to most of the performers, the lady
in the show, Neha Cherian, portrayed by Uttara Krishnadas, could
have done a better job. She looked blank all through and her
voice too refused to reveal her emotions. Thus, the romance
between Hari, played by Abhijeet 'Monty' Mohanty and Neha just
did not click.
“I liked the author the best. S Vidhyuth, who narrated the
scenes was adept and knew where to say what. Without him, the
play would have gone haywire,” says Sharanya C.R.
Aaryan.A feels that though the audience could relate to the
scenes in the play, it seemed to be set in times long past gone.
“IITians are no more the bookworms and nerds as they were
projected in the play,” chips in his IITian friend Adarsh, “and
it would have made sense to have made this play some 10 years
ago.” But hey, plays do not have any time barrier, do they? They
just project what happens or happened in society in the past.
Lighting by Amit Singh really worked wonders and highlighted the
characters and scenes right when it was required. Vijay
Karthik’s sound management was commendable too.
On the whole, turning a blind eye to a few clangers, it was a
good show. It had the audience roaring with laughter and the
public seemed very satisfied with the presentation. No one
objected to sitting through the play continuously for two whole
hours without an intermission, which is a credit in itself!
Padma Venkatraman |
