This Saturday, young director Murtuza Kutianwala will be showcasing his mad comedy on anger and angry characters, Frying Pan, to add a dash of spice to the holiday fun
From Bradley Cooper (Wedding Crashers) to Adam Sandler (Anger Management), anger has served as a rich mine of jokes, always. On that note, 24-year-old Murtuza Kutianawala decided to build a play revolving on the universal emotion by getting together four irate characters that have ‘anger management issues’.
Still from the play, Frying Pan
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Four-way anger
The director breaks it down, “There are four kinds of anger — passive aggressive, volatile, chronic and judgmental.” He models these four kinds of characters who are awaiting their final redemption from being labelled as the ‘angry bird’ by earning their anger management certificate. Alas, the therapist never arrives and tempers boil as the milieu comprises Sadanandam Shah aka Sandy (Gujarati gambling addict); Natasha Bhatt (Yoga instructor); Hassan Al Asad (Syrian foreign exchange student); and Dev (car salesman).
Enacted by Abhishek Pattnaik and Nidhi Singh along with Kutianawala, and writer Sujay Mirchandani, the play promises to be a laugh riot. “We enjoy exploring one topic or emotion like the tip of an umbrella that opens slowly and spreads out into a wide variety of issues,” nails the young Kutianwala who just wrapped up staging his fourth production, 786, a collection of three short plays on superstition that dramatises three simple attitudes towards them — positive, negative and indifferent.
The mad and the angry
Exploiting a slew of eccentricities from Sandy’s Gujarati stress on receiving every worth of his spent penny to Hassan who needs his withheld passport, the desperation of the character ensues chaos.
“The most interesting thing about the play is how the therapist never appears,” Kutianwala shares, adding, “Also, how there is a tendency, especially during rehab sessions, tou00a0not only empathise with each others, sob stories but even solve themu00a0unknowingly”.
The actor-director-host started his journey on a popular channel for children and has been working with them for the past four years, including acting on the show, Best of Luck Nikki. Having begun his tryst with theatre just two and a half years ago, he articulates his passion infectiously, “I will never let go of direction. It is the acceptance you get in theatre, right at the moment, something that can’t be shirked off at any cost.”
On: December 28, 7 pm
At: NCPA, Nariman Point.
Call: 22824567 / 66223724
Cost: Rs 300 and Rs 400
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