KARACHI: The last theatrical presentation of the National Academy of Performing Arts’ (Napa) laughter festival was an Urdu version of a Neil Simon play The Last of the Red Hot Lovers.

Performed on Saturday and Sunday by a Lahore-based theatre group, the play’s Urdu title was Dil-i-Nadan. It was a decent effort with plausible performances by all the cast members.

On Saturday, though, they looked a trifle under-prepared, which is perhaps understandable because it’s not easy to land in a city and get adjusted to the venue where one is supposed to perform in the blink of an eye. This could also be the reason that they were taking more than the usual time to shift between scenes.

Dil-i-Nadan has Yawar Malik (played by Omair Rana, who also directed the comedy) at its centre. He has turned 43 and has so far led an okay, or what he called “munaasib”, life. He is married to a woman named Rabia (Huma Ijaz). At this juncture of his life Yawar has begun to think about death. The thought that his existence has thus far been an uneventful one bugs him, so he wants more fun and games.

When the curtains go up, Yawar is seen waiting for a girl at his mother’s flat (when the mother is not around). The idea of an extramarital fling titillates him. However, the moment the girl, Mehreen (Rasti Farooq), enters the flat it becomes more than evident that Yawar doesn’t have in his system that can make infidelity come natural to him, despite the fact that Mehreen wants what he set out to want.

Things don’t work out and in the next scene Yawar invites another woman, Ayan (Zainab Ahmed), for the same purpose. Ayan is a struggling actress and a bit of a fraud, who, after duping Yawar into smoking something fishy, does something harmful to him. When this attempt also doesn’t come off, Yawar invites the vulnerable wife of a friend to the flat. Tania (Nadia Afgan), like the previous two women, is talkative but can talk sense. And that’s where it dawns on him that he should have never indulged in such a meaningless pursuit of happiness.

Dil-i-Nadan has most of the ingredients that are required to construct a proper play. The actors are efficient enough and seem to know their job; only if the girls, other than Nadia Afgan, projected their voices in a manner that theatre artists do, the dialogue would have been more audible.

The sequence where Yawar and Tania get into a physical tussle over the possession of the latter’s bag changes the linear movement of the plot, and in the process gets the audience’s undivided attention. The current references from socio-political happenings incorporated into the script worked as well. So, not a bad end to the festival.

Published in Dawn, January 15th, 2018