Preview of the show

Laughs all the way

SIMPLE STORY, WELL-TOLD A scene from "Kingdom of Fools

There is no moral to the story. The bilingual (Tamil and English) play "Kingdom of Fools", staged by Landing Stage recently at Top Storey (Alliance Francaise), told a simple story, well. With folksy songs and good acting, it is a light-hearted take on a kingdom being ruled by fools — here a king and his equally daft minister. The pea-brained royal issues orders such as "work at night and sleep in the mornings" to beat sunstroke ("day is night and night is day") and asks merchants to sell everything for Re.1, to fight inflation. A wandering mendicant and his disciple chance upon the kingdom. The disciple, happy about how cheap the food is, decides to stay on, while the guru, sensing danger, moves on. The story, mostly about the king's foolishness, goes on to tell how the disciple regrets the decision to stay and how the guru saves him.

Most of the actors did a good job, especially the three narrators and soldiers (Madhumathi N., Revathy Y. and Dharanya S.), the minister (Ananya Modi) and the woman who is a suspected for being involved in a murder (Rashida A.T.). Granted the play tests your patience in bits, such as the sequence of an inquiry into a death of a thief, killed when a wall (of the house he was attempting to rob) collapses on him. The brother of the thief comes to court seeking justice. The inquiry unearths many suspects, from the owner of the house and the builder of the wall to the woman (a "harlot") who distracted him and the jeweller responsible for the woman's presence in the street. This bit of the play dragged, with each actor repeating the sequence of events that led to the death whenever a new suspect was found. Also the story is meant to be fun. So switching to pathos and fear when the disciple is about to be killed does not gel with the rest of the play.

The king is meant to be a dimwit. Therefore, when he makes intelligent insights, like foreseeing that the subjects may ask for a right to rule the kingdom, it jars just a bit.

But at the end of it all, the group presented an enjoyable play. Introducing the cast and crew through a song was also a nice touch. Aruna Ganesh Ram scripted and directed the play.

ASHA S. MENON