Venue: India Habitat Centre
Date: 10 May, 2016

Right after a hearty lunch at recently launched Oh My God  we headed to India Habitat Centre for the play Ballabhpur ki Roopkatha. This play, written by the renowned playwright Badal Sircar and directed by Sunil Rawat, was staged at the amphitheatre and looking at the heat and humidity we were not very keen. But there were not too many options that evening, so we settled for this play.

And that’s the thing about having low expectations. You can either say “yeah it was ok….we knew it” or be left with a “oh wow what a pleasant surprise”. In either case you are not disappointed. Well Ballabhpur ki Roopkatha was anything but a disappointment.

The Plot

This comedy play dealt with the story of Bhupati Rai of Ballabhpur, who owns a palace left by his ancestors – A palace that is haunted with a singing ghost who has some unfinished business. Bhupati Rai in his bid to sell this palace to gather some money to migrate and start his business tries hard to hide the ghost and put up a charade with the help of his friend and some staff. And what fun it was. This very verbose play took us from smiles to laughs effortlessly.

Special mention to the actor who played Bhupati Rai’s friend. His act of confusion and his comic timing was perfect. Especially Baba Ramdev’s Balayam Yoga (finger nail rubbing to regrow hair) act that he did, had audience in splits. It was the best moment of the play.

And the special effects…

It’s not easy to create a ghost on stage in front of audience but the team did it beautifully with the help of some light and sound effects. We were thrilled to see something ghostly on the stage. The performances, gimmicks and above everything a fantastic story line made our evening and we completely forgot that we were sitting out in the open and have constantly dripping sweat from our faces.

Some editing to reduce the duration of the play would make it even better.