KARACHI: There is no better sight for theatre aficionados than seeing lovers of comedy laugh their heads off while watching a play that’s meant to have them in stitches.

That’s exactly what happened on Tuesday night when director Rauf Afridi put up a play Aar Paar in the National Academy of Performing Arts’ (Napa) ongoing Laughter Fest. There were even moments when the audience guffawed and then whistled in appreciation for the zaniness that the actors displayed with utter abandon.

Afridi adapted Aar Paar from Philip King’s See How They Run. One doesn’t know why he named the play Aar Paar, but the bottom line is that he managed to make the audience remain glued to their seats throughout the 90-plus minutes of production, not thinking about leaving the auditorium, waiting for the next funny situation to unfold and the characters to go zanier by the minute. And that’s what counts.

The play begins with a scene when Tehzeeb (Fajr Sheikh) comes looking for Hammad (a university principal played by Hammad Khan) to complain about the uncalled-for ‘modern’ behaviour of his wife, Abeera (Abeera Pervaiz). Before meeting him, she runs into their talkative maid Kinza (Tehreem Shafiq).

Abeera is a former aspiring actress, who is in the process of putting up a play on campus. A little later, Abeera and Tehzeeb have a tit-for-tat moment which Hammad tries to resolve. Hammad and his wife then talk about the expected arrival of another academic, Leelo Gujjar (Aqeel Ahmed). He leaves for a little while and in comes Abeera’s cousin Faqeer (Ahmer Hussain), a military man who in college used to act with her in stage productions.

They enact a scene from one of their past performances which Tehzeeb coincidentally sees and takes them for a romantic couple. They spot Tehzeeb, and have her mistakenly drink vodka instead of water. She gets tipsy, and in a subsequent scene pushes into a cupboard to hide her from the rest. In the meantime, the police (represented by Usman Javed as an effeminate man) are searching for a suicide bomber (M. Affan) who has entered the area. The terrorist accidentally hits Hammad in the head, and he gets conscious, and ends up, after some rib-tickling mishaps, in the same cupboard as Tehzeeb.

This unleashes a series of small events where mistaken identities drive the characters nuts –– especially when Abeera’s mamu (Hammad Siddiq), who hasn’t yet seen Abeera’s husband, steps into the house. He thinks Faqeer is his niece’s hubby, and only in the end finds out that he isn’t.

Aar Paar is a praiseworthy effort primarily because Afridi is a street smart guy. Two things indicate that: his characters are constantly on the go, covering almost the entire span of the stage, and dialogue with a mass appeal.

It works, and works well. Yes, the director has a tendency of coming up with (TV) sitcom-ish jokes such as using the word waqar (honour) for referencing cricketer Waqar Younus, but in the larger scheme of things his knack for making his characters entertain the audience with crazy antics doesn’t allow the audience to lose attention.

Of course, this cannot happen without the support of actors who know their job well, and his cast on Tuesday (barring a couple of stage management and prop-related slip-ups) was on song. Kudos!

Published in Dawn, January 17th, 2019