12 inches, a play by Underdog Entertainment, from Bengaluru, can only be called a euphemism for borderline trashy and tasteless humour. Even if it played to a packed house with people spilling over to the sides, it didn’t make it any more gratifying to have the actors doing pelvic thrusts in your direction. A play that claims to focus on the objectification of men does nothing more than merely rant about the obvious. Except for two monologues, one at the beginning and another towards the end, the rest of the play can be safely forgotten.
For a subject loaded with this much sexual content, the actors could have been a little more refined in their approach, making their insinuations easier to digest. Also, it was probably not a good idea to show a homosexual man and a bunch of chatty girls blatantly ogle at the protagonist’s ‘assets’.
The production did have a faint silver lining though, in the form of a live background score that was played abruptly from time to time. However lines like ‘He has it big, and we need to think big’, only end up stating the obvious.
The actors were far from convincing and relied on a few tried and tested punch lines to evoke laughter once in a while. The script could have been saved if the actors were more committed to playing their roles instead of focusing on unnecessary theatrics and juvenile guffawing.
