Eight plays in 80 minutes, and a whole lot of laughs to go with it; that pretty much sums up Stray Factory’s performance of Osama, Cinema and A Whole Lot of Black Money .
The play, presented as part of their five-year anniversary celebration, is a collection of their most celebrated short plays, many of which are winners of Chennai’s Short+Sweet festival from the past.
While most of the plays deal with serious and sometimes intense issues, they are told with a touch of humour, and feature many quirky characters, making the performances highly entertaining to watch.
While Va Van Go(gh) written by Bhargav Prasad had an interesting script, it was the execution of My Name is Cine-ma , (directed by Mathivanan Rajendran), Chairpersons (written and directed by Rajiv Rajaram) and Madras Military Mess (directed by Shyam Renganathan) that made it such a compelling watch.
With others like Karpuram (performed by Pooja Devariya and Kiran Naig), A Typist with Destiny (performed by Naveen George Thomas and Shravan Ramakrishnan) and Maya from Madurai (performed by Venkatesh Harinathan), it was the applause-winning performances of the actors that brought the scripts to life.
The troupe put on a grand show, and though they had the audience in splits for most of the performance, they also offered much food for thought.
