KARACHI: It was a huge challenge, to put it mildly, for KopyKats Productions to do a stage show without eminent writer Anwar Maqsood’s literature-infused, socially-conscious script. Does their latest production, Bananistan, at the Arts Council live up to the challenge? Not sure.

Bananistan, directed by Tulin Khalid Azim, has a plot as simple as ABC. It is set in 2030 in a country, Bananistan, which, as explained by an announcer in the beginning of the programme, has nothing to do with Pakistan. The politicians no more hold sway and martial law has been imposed. In the midst of it all, a play is being staged for which auditions are taking place. There has been an accident in which many actors have lost their lives, so the makers of the drama are desperate to cast anyone who’s willing to take part in the play. Who come for the auditions? The politicians. They are: Nawaz Sharif (Taha), Imran Khan (Dawar Mehmood), Asif Ali Zardari (Hammad), Altaf Hussain (Saqib Sameer), Maulana Fazlur Rehman (Mustafa Chaudhry), Qaim Ali Shah (Shafqat Khan), Hina Rabbani (Fareeha Raza) and Shahbaz Sharif (Umar).

It’s all crystal clear. What we see is a bunch of actors mimicking political figures, and in the process allowing the audience to laugh at the expense of the politicians. No matter how trite the idea sounds (because it’s been happening on TV shows for many years and KopyKats’ own productions have done that) no one can deny that the concept has inescapable, innate funniness. The thing that needs to be examined is how far one can stretch it to keep the funniness relevant and fresh.

Rest assured Bananistan has many humourous moments, but the bite is missing. The comedy is there, but the satire is damp. What the play suffers from is the lack of depth in the dialogue, which implies that on many occasions, when a line is uttered, it hits a target from which lessons are hard to glean. They are bullets shot into the air. The script for the show has been collaboratively penned by a few actors. Well, the collaboration has worked, albeit in patches. For example, the audience can’t help but guffaw when, while enacting a scene, Nawaz Sharif asks Shabhaz Sharif (who is doing the role of a waiter in the sequence) to take out apple from the apple pie and only bring only the pie (read: paey – cow trotters that Nawaz is fond of) to him.

But then things don’t move beyond this humour quotient. The references to Shahbaz Sharif’s laptops, Imran Khan’s kursi (chair) and Altaf Hussain’s boris (sacks) come in between, eliciting laughter. The satire, however, is nonexistent. Even if it does exist, it doesn’t count for much.

Mustafa Chaudhry as Fazlur Rehman is outstanding, and Dawar Mehmood’s Imran Khan and Fareeha Raza’s Hina Rabbani too make for fine character sketches. The disappointment is Shafqat Khan as Qaim Ali Shah, because despite the allusions to the former chief minister of Sindh’s old age, he speaks like a man oozing with energy.

Published in Dawn, August 28th, 2016