A psychopath, a beast, a devil; Kissago’s Man Vs Wild is a three-way monologue face-off with each monologue getting darker than the previous.
The rain gods tried their best to stop these dark creatures from coming out with their stories at Lamkaan on Saturday, but to no avail. Shifting to the balcony in the last moment and using it as a makeshift stage actually worked in the favour of the characters, although the team did have a tough time. The darkness of the characters in that confined space was pronounced more effectively than it would have been in the open space.
Jay Jha embodied the first monologue playing a killer who was responsible for taking 16 lives. There was confusion behind the motives of the murders and some disagreement on what title to call him. Some called him a saint, as he saved a girl from a killer. Some called him a psycho as he would go around killing anyone who would annoy him. Jay brought out the denial of a psycho beautifully. The rationalisation of murders and the pleasure of killing could be seen in his eyes and scarily so.
The second monologue was the pick of the day. It was a story of a Rottweiler who is taunted by a couple of lap dogs in his neighbourhood. Sree Hari, playing the Rottweiler and taking us through the thought process of the dog till the point when it could not take anymore and tears the two dogs apart, was a performance that transfixed everyone. Staying in character and delivering his lines between his barking fits was unreal. Kudos to this actor for being so consistently wonderful on stage.
The third monologue was the devil ranting into the night and trying to make us believe that it was actually the God who was the bad guy. He had become the symbol of all things bad only due to the lack of good PR from his side. The devil was played by Shekhar. It was a bit of a letdown after two riveting performances. Shekhar seemed too casual on stage, forgetting his lines frequently.
One thing that anybody doing a monologue should keep in mind is the crispness of the story. If your monologue is going beyond 20 minutes, it better have new ideas. Repetition of the same thing makes the audience impatient. All the three monologues were guilty of this.
In the end, the actors and the rains together had painted a pretty dark Saturday evening, but could not stop the audience to shower praises on the team for powering through all the odds to put up the show.
