As I walked into the National Library Auditorium in Islamabad to watch the new comedy in town, Dinner with an Idiot, I received a sms from a friend already sitting somewhere in the hall “Having dinner with an idiot?”
I was quick to reply “Not till you confirm.”
The organisers deserve a big round of applause for coming up with an Urdu play in Islamabad and that too without any sponsorship. In the words of Syed Masud, the organiser of the show, “Although the hall is half-full, but the audience has paid for it this time.” As we all know, living in Islamabad one doesn't expect this to happen very often.
The central idea of Dinner with an Idiot has been adapted from a French play, Le Diner de Cons, and also from the Bollywood production, Bheja Fry, by Fahim Azam and his better half, co-writer Maria Qadri. The director-writer's ability to blend it with local masala sure did make the goings-on on stage sumptuous and spicy.
Opening with the simple and comfy setting of a living room, Dinner with an Idiot revolves around the music director, Hassan (played by Dawar Mahmood), who invites young and aspiring musicians/singers to dinner and then mocks them and pulls their legs in a way that the naïve aspirant doesn't have a clue about what's going on. Saba, Hassan's wife, is also a singer by profession and refuses to accept her husband's snobbery, threatening to walk out of his life. During an argument, Hassan hurts his back and from there on is glued to a leather couch, unable to walk. He is seen requesting, begging, crying and even shouting for assistance throughout the 90-minute play.
At this point, a neighborhood doctor (Farhatullah Babar) is called to medically examine Hassan. A confused, lost soul suffering from short-term memory loss, his character seems to be tailor-made with great synchronisation with his body movements.
The other two important characters of the performance were Janjua the tax inspector (Shafqat Khan) and Ashraf the aspiring singer (Mohsin Ejaz). Shafqat's dialogue delivery and flawless moves kept me searching for his entry whereas Mohsin's well-tuned vocal chords mesmerised the audience time and again. The songs were mostly popular Pakistani numbers, and the ease and spontaneity with which Mohsin delivered them was remarkable.
Spur of the moment clichés and puns, combined with an amalgamation of lines from everyday Pakistani TV commercials woven in the dialogues made Dinner with an Idiot quite indigenous and fun to watch. Later, speaking to director Faheem Azam for Images on Sunday, he said, “This comedy will make you cry....with tears of irrepressible laughter and joy.”
At the end of the play the characters reveal their true identity to Hassan, including his wife Saba, all in an attempt to teach him a lesson. Come curtain call and the director's thank you speech at five km/hr (he thanked everyone and anyone under the sun) made many frown if not yawn in the audience.