Ninety minutes of chuckles

The National Academy of Performing Arts’ eleven-day laughter fest has truly lived up to its name. It has given the citizens of a city otherwise wracked by anarchy and law and order problems, which had reduced citizens to the stage of neurotics, cause to laugh their sighs out.

One such play was staged on Thursday evening which kept the audiences just riveted to their seats and provided them ample laughter. The pungent humour and the witty retorts of the play were a real treat for the viewers.

The play, Ghanchakkar, was one big pack of laughter. In a nutshell, it is a farce of mistaken identities and lies which at first sight may look or sound absolutely innocuous but result in amusingly complicated situations. A couple of friends, a job that’s not what it’s given out to be, a wife and a beautiful model who in the course of these lies are forced to switch identities, and the marriage being endangered because of these lies, all these make for a really comical situation.

Faisal Arain, an impostor who gives himself out as a lawyer just to win the love of the girl he admires, invites his boss Mr Irani to dinner. In the meantime, one of his ex-college fellows, Mansoor turns up and on account of their goof-ups, Faisal’s wife, Komal, just leaves and goes away without informing Faisal as to where she’s going. In the meantime, a beautiful model, Tina M, makes her entry. Then in comes an overbearing personality Faisal’s “Boss” Mr Irani. Meanwhile, Komal is also back, and a situation is reached where Komal and Tina M have to switch identities, Komal posing as Tina M and Tina M posing as Komal.

The farce continues till there’s a happy ending.

Unlike most theatrical productions, this play was not meant to philosophise or project any social or philosophic themes. It was just pure entertainment meant just to make the viewers relax and laugh their tensions away and the director really succeeded at that.

All the cast executed their roles meticulously. However, the one who really stood for her role was Najma Kifayat as the beautiful, perky and vivacious model Tina M. She really infused life into the farce.

Also, director SM Jameel deserves all the laurels.