KARACHI: Doing comedy on stage is a tricky business: one small misstep, a late retort, an ill-timed move, an unconvincingly delivered line… and the entire effort can turn into a damp squib.

It is courageous of the National Academy of Performing Arts (Napa) to organise a ‘Laughter festival’ for theatre-goers, because it’s no mean feat to keep them smiling and laughing for almost two weeks. Well, they did laugh on Wednesday as the festival kicked off with a play titled Crash Landing directed by Rauf Afridi.

The play initially focuses on an architect named Jimmy (Hassan Khan) who lives in Dubai. Jimmy has a roving eye. Girls are his weakness. So when the lights fade in he is seen having a relationship with one of them, Zareena (Aqsa Qureshi). The other two are Nargis (Bani Mirza) and Najma (Najma Kiyafat) – all of whom are airhostesses. None of them is aware of his philandering nature. Each thinks he is loyal to her. The interesting thing is that all of them live in the same apartment with him but Jimmy has planned his meetings in such a way that their arrivals in, and departures from, the apartment do not coincide. He is able to pull this off with the help of his home chef Mamoo (Hammad Siddiqui) who also lives under the same roof.

The story gains impetus when Jimmy’s childhood friend Bashir Dar (Rauf Afridi) comes for a visit and gets to know about his friend’s multiple love lives. Dar is an uncouth fellow who does not weigh his words before uttering them. While trying to support his friend in his deceitful acts, he himself begins to fall for one of the girls, Nargis. Of course, no setup or situation can remain the same forever. Things in Jimmy’s life start to get complicated when one of the girls arrives unexpectedly and he and Dar try and hide the other girl from her.

Crash Landing, it seems, is inspired by a French play Boeing-Boeing which was also made into a Hollywood film. But while watching the play one could not help think of an Indian film Garam Masala (2005) directed by Priyadarshan, which was a remake of a Malyalam film also based on Boeing-Boeing. It’s a remarkable movie in which Akshay Kumar and John Abraham play the protagonist and his friend. The most striking feature of Garam Masala is the director’s ability to create theatricality within the framework of a film. This happens largely because of the tremendous comedic timing of all the actors (boys and girls), especially in scenes where slapstick is used to maximum effect. Add to this the fact that Kumar and Abraham looked the part(s) of a playboy and a goofy man respectively.

On Wednesday, Rauf Afridi’s version relied more on dialogue, innuendos and contemporary pop references. It did manage to elicit laughter from the younger members of the audience, but one is not sure whether Afridi himself was satisfied with his performance.

Published in Dawn, January 4th, 2018