‘Planet of the Apes’ revisited

Sometimes fantasies have to be resorted to in order to bring home certain lessons. One such fantasy was staged at the National Academy of Performing Arts (Napa) on Tuesday evening. 

Titled ‘Insaanwar’, it portrays a situation where humans have become a species of the very distant past and the planet is now inhabited by apes. It is a society where there’s no such thing as organised religion but a code of conduct based on a system of rules for the smooth functioning of the community.

Whenever there is a crisis in the community, its members come together to resolve it.

Just as in a human society which is supposed to be extinct by now, an ape falls in love with his female counterpart. but their marriage is opposed by some. While the community gets together to work out a solution, there is a flashback of millions of years, to the time of the humans where we see cleavages in society on the basis of religion, cast, colour, and creed. Two young humans fall in love but their marriage is opposed on the grounds that their religions are diverse and as such the marriage is impossible. While in the human world such a situation ends in futility, in the world of the apes amicable solutions are found to such dilemmas.

Part of Napa’s playwright project, the play aims to bring home the fact that faith and its allied views are a very personal matter and must not be allowed to prevent humans coming together.

The play opens with the apes discussing the human civilisation which is supposed to have existed hundreds of thousands years earlier and they tell each other how humans killed each other and resorted to unethical practices all because of their views.

Then there is a flashback to the age of the humans and there’s a boy of one faith who’s madly in love with a girl of a different faith and as such their union is not allowed.

All the stars put real life into their roles what with all those antics of primates. It was an hour and forty-five minutes of laughter.