by Kavya
When I walked into Ranga Shankara today, I had no idea what
I was in for. The title of the play was far from helpful, and this further ensured
that I was completely taken by the performance.
The Drama School Mumbai’s production of The Curious Climb of
Cutter Chee: A Gangster Spectacle is a crazy pastiche, two hours of references
to Bollywood greats from the 1970s masquerading as an adaptation of Bertolt
Brecht’s political satire “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui”. As the director
Benjamin Samuels notes, “When I was asked to direct a version of Brecht’s
Arturo Ui for the Drama School Mumbai, all I could see was Amitabh Bachchan in
an all-white three piece suit.”
The play follows the lives of gangster Cutter Chee, his
wildcat assistant Roma, the evil business owner Ms. Bedi, the “incorruptible”
Minister of Urban Development Dogeshwar and a host of other characters, amongst
which are the Bollywood trope henchmen and the village idiot. The actors were
amazingly versatile, switching seamlessly between one role and the next, while
also changing the set, and doing the sounds entirely. The coordination was
effortless, and a pleasure to watch. I
particularly enjoyed the scene where Roma plays pool, and the noise of the
balls clicking is provided by one of the other actors tapping two sticks
together. It was innovative and made me want to try things like that for my
plays.
The play managed to retain that Bollywood ‘70s nostalgia
consistently, and it really had a couple of “moments” when the whole thing fell
together as believable as a Don or a Deewaar. In addition, the underlying theme
of Hitler’s rise, artfully concealing satirical references in an Indian
context, showed up beautifully, and were most powerful with the famous last
line of the play: “Do not
rejoice in his defeat, you men. For though the world has stood up and stopped
the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again.” Conceptually and
stylistically, the play was memorable: managing to adapt a play seamlessly into
a context very different from the one it was set in, as well as having a
minimal set and no sounds at all.
Having said that, while this play as Brecht intended it was
for it to be a completely overdramatized farce, there were points where the
slapstick humour just did not work for me. Some of the jokes and stage
decisions seemed a little forced. Overall though, the play was a great watch,
two hours of my life very well spent.
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