KARACHI: To do justice to the humour embedded in a piece of prose, an essay at that, in a standup act is no mean feat. It is not merely the enactment of the dialogic quality in the text which needs to be as tonally close to how the writer has presented his case, but it is also important for artists to keep the nuances of prose writing in mind.

Theatre group Qissah Farosh’s attempt at interpreting two of noted Urdu humourist Shafiq-ur-Rehman’s essays at T2F on Saturday evening was well received by admirers of literature.

The first of the two pieces was titled Review, performed by Tariq Raja. Compared to the second essay, Hamari Filmein (acted out by Adnan Jaffar), it was a difficult work in terms of conveying its message to the audience without losing out on the humour quotient, because it was less dramatic. It made fun of those who review books with an irreverent approach, discussing how reviewers don’t even bother to know about the contents of the book, or for that matter how they use a plethora of clichés, of generalised statements to sound scholarly. It is quite striking how spot-on the humourist was in his observation.

Hamari Filmein, as can be guessed by the title, touched upon the inanities that more often than not embody the storylines of films in the subcontinent. It insightfully began with the assertion that our movies have come a long way, from period dramas to socially realistic stories, and then unleashed a salvo of satiric hard-hitting and funny sentences mentioning the mindless coincidences, the childish symbolism (for example, two birds perched on a bough depicting a couple in love) and the irrepressible urge to sing a song on every important occasion in the screenplay. Again, hats off to the late Shafiq-ur-Rehman for speaking the truth without getting apologetic about it.

The two performers — Tariq Raja and Adnan Jaffar — did a decent job. The one thing that they always do well is that they try to comprehend and imbibe the subtext as much as the original text. This showed in their acts. Yes, they looked a trifle under-rehearsed (Raja at one point couldn’t find the breathing space in between lines and Jaffar was taking more than required time to shift from one idea to another, as if remembering his lines). Since they had invested not just artistically but intellectually too into the scripts, their performance left a good impression on the audience. The audience laughed when the situation was supposed to elicit laughter and chuckled when it wasn’t a laugh-worthy one.

The show could have had more impact if the 30-minute-long single pieces had been trimmed and instead two more essays, with edited versions, added to the scheme of things. This means four 15-minute short and crisp acts. The reason for this argument is that in Shafiq-ur-Rehman’s writings (unlike that of Mushtaq Yousufi’s who bestows his characters with witty one-liners and puns) a certain situation is built up and then dissected further until the narrator himself seems to get enough of it. Nonetheless, nice stuff!

Published in Dawn, September 7th, 2015

On a mobile phone? Get the Dawn Mobile App: Apple Store | Google Play