The Dramatic Arts : Vivahamalai.com

Family dramas are a tricky thing to pull off; because the play has to maintain the pacing and at the same time make sure the audience are not underwhelmed with the conflict that is presented in the story. Generally this is done by focusing on two simple things, making sure that the comedy before the conflict is funny and clever enough, that the audience both enjoy the play and at the same time notice the build up towards the conflict; and when the shift from comedy to a much serious dramatic atmosphere does happen, the audience don’t find it jarring.

Last year Mayurapriya presented Oru Kodi Kanavagul, a play that explored a very serious and rarely broached topic of the pressure that the education system places on youngsters today, in a very down to earth fashion. While I wouldn’t call the play an astounding success, it was definitely a very enjoyable one. This year they bring to stage Vivahamalai.com; another family drama that explores the difficulties that youngsters and their families go through when it comes to marriages. To say that they have improved would be an understatement; for they have taken great measures to craft a cohesive, consistently paced, humorous play that flows from scene to scene with ease creating a story that youngsters and more importantly their parents will enjoy.

While I will not spoil the major conflict of the play, I do want to do an in depth analysis of the play and explore why it works so well, despite its minor flaws. I want to take a reverse approach in analyzing this play because most of its strengths lie in its execution rather than the script or the depth of the story itself. The basic plot follows two families, one consisting of a father and son and another, a very modern family with a very independent daughter who also happens to be a feminist. It basically deals with the problems they face before and after the betrothal of the two youngsters. Along the way there are important subplots that also have morals that they share with the audience. All of this is held together by the founder of a Matrimonial Website; Vivahamalai.com.

While my breakdown may have made it seem convoluted, the play is surprisingly very clear in its execution of the story elements and does not really have any glaring loopholes. The characters are believable and more importantly relatable. I mention relatable separately because it is not always that you find characters on which you can project yourself or people you know on to during a stage play. But to its credit Vivahamalai.com is chock full of characters that you will look at and go “I know people like that”. Even the primary antagonist is in a way relatable, despite him being a walking talking cliché.

A large part of what I loved in the execution was the seamless nature of it. Even though it was not without its problems, most of the play was practically timed and executed to almost perfection; and if you ask me, all the credit for the perfect placement of props, the changing of scenes, the dress changes, the lighting, the music and also the sets goes to the team behind the stage. A lot of them were, surprisingly, youngsters and I am happy to see them takeover not only on the stage but behind it too.

The lighting by Kalaivanan was on point and sets by “Saida Kumar”, designed by his son Shanmugam, were really a sight to behold. The music also played an important role in keeping the pace of the play moving forward and a lot of credit goes to the score, original songs and the vocals by Guhaprasath. Vivahamalai.com is a perfect example of what happens when a team practices so much that they are able to work without missing a single beat and even when something does go wrong they are quick to recover.

The acting was also top notch. Everyone did their roles perfectly making sure the characters shined and not the actors themselves. A lot of people talk about method acting and doing things like living as the character for weeks before a play, I don’t really believe in that. This play is a prime example of what normal, competent, actors can do with proper guidance and a lot of practice. Nothing faltered here, the delivery of the lines, both comedic and serious ones, and the shift in tone and even when they made mistakes, they were able to recover and even sometimes lead other actors to their lines without the audience noticing.

Despite all the praise there were some flaws that could have been easily avoided. Forgetting props, especially Cell-phones, isn’t excusable by any means. Another jarring thing that bugged me whenever it happened was the use of the wrong entry and exits and also missed timings during the entry. Other small things that could have been avoided is walking in front of actors when they are speaking, but since it only happened once because of a lack of proper space between propsI am willing to be a bit forgiving. A small suggestion and warning would be that overdressing a set is completely possible especially as the size of the stage becomes smaller. This is in lieu of the fact that despite the sets looking perfectly filled and put together, scaling down would require more simplicity and I do hope that is taken into account in future performances.

At the end of the day, these are all minor nitpicks and because of the overall attention to detail it doesn’t add up to make them appear jarring in anyway. I also want to give a lot of credit to the Director, P Muthukumaran, who took up this mammoth task. I am sure not being an actor this time around was a huge advantage. Pulling all my points together I am happy to say that Vivahamalai.com presents an almost perfect example of the people both on and off stage working together to raise a conceptually simple script that could have easily felt weak, to a powerhouse of a play;filled with exceptional performances, especially from the two lead actresses Roshini Mohan and Uma Mohan (A mother daughter duo!), clever comedic timing, deliberate and thoughtful direction and most importantly impeccable backstage work; definitely a huge step up over their previous outing.

Now that I have spent over nine hundred words gushing about how much I liked the execution of the play, I want to be frank here and admit that I feel comfortable with finding only so many synonyms for incredible. So, with confidence that I have gotten my point across let me move on to discussing the script of the play where I am a bit conflicted because of the stellar execution. But a critics mind works just how you expect it to and to be fair, the myths about me obtaining a sadistic form of pleasure from ripping apart plays are completely true. So without further ado, let’s move on to the script.

As much as I was enamored by the execution, I felt that the story itself was not as powerful as it wanted to be, because of certain problems that are not addressed while setting up certain characters. One very pivotal scene is one where the young girl addresses the boy’s father by name. The moment and the reaction of the characters are not completely acceptable. A similar version where a character is disrespected was done with much more finesse in Oru Kodi Kanavagul.

I am mentioning this scene in particular detail because, to me this scene was supposed to make the audience question if they were on the “good” side of the conflict. Instead it ended up not having much of an impact. I can anticipatesome possible counterarguments that can be given to justify that it was done well but, to me, some establishment of how much respect the father commands from other characters and especially the son would have gone a long way in increasing the impact.

Another problem I had was at the very end of the play when the character arcs are brought to a close and all problems are resolved. I would have preferred a few line of dialogue between the two protagonists where they actually acknowledge each other’s fault, exchange apologies and words of acceptance face to face, rather than the message being delivered by the parents and them just agreeing to it. The whole of the second half is built around the conflict that brews between the couple and to see it resolved so quickly was “almost” disappointing.

The play is also full of tropes and clichés. This is not necessarily a bad thing but when the execution is done well, but it is a bit too apparent in this case. The classic subservient husband, the overused “villain” archetype with attributes which you find more commonly in fictional people rather than a realistic character, the naïve side character and perhaps the most apparent being the overzealous and short tempered feminist.

There are also many clichés in the story itself. Themes of old and new traditions clashing, large conflicts and problems brought about by small misunderstandings, circumstantial evidence, almost unbelievable coincidences are the more apparent ones. The script is also padded with a lot of comedic filler. And while all of them are extremely funny they serve to greatly increase the runtime of the play creating this huge chunk before the interval and leaving just the climax and resolution for after the interval. To me that is the greatest problem the script suffers from; its length. It would have a better pace if the play was shorter but since most of the padding comes from the jokes, and especially ones that I enjoyed a lot, I don’t see any particular way around it. Do you see why I am conflicted here?

Despite all of this though, I can’t help but admire the script for its charm and wit. Yes, these are all morals and situations that you have seen one place or the other but I have to give credit where credit is due and appreciate the clever dialogue that ties all these situations in a cohesive, understandable and mostly believable manner. Yes some scenes are cheesy, some lines are corny, some character arcs are predictable and most of the themes have been discussed before but despite all this the genius of the script lies in how it makes all of these drawbacks into its plusses.  

I spent a lot of time brainstorming last night as I was fixing my computer, so much so that I fell asleep on the table at around two in the night woke up at four in the morning and crawled into bed so that I could sleep in a position that wouldn’t leave my neck feeling as if seventy people danced on it. In all that time I was thinking about what was the better play; Saduranga Parvai or Vivahamalai.com. This is because despite all my statements of how you can’t compare two different genres of plays and how each one is its own entity, I have to say which one is the better play when I cover the Mudra Drama Festival and give out awards.

So objectively speaking, this is the conclusion I came to. Saduranga Parvai has powerful scenes and Vivahamalai.com, despite not having a lot of “stand-out” scenes other than two that I can recall, is an overall stellar play. Opinions may vary here, but clearly one was better than the other and that was just because of one simple fact the entire play flowed incredible well.

Vivahamalai.com is, to me, better than Saduranga Parvai because a great play can be made up of few good scenes, but a few great scenes can’t make a great play. Vivahamalai.com was consistent, precise, charming, well put together and despite its flaws is just a damn good play. It may not be my usual cup of tea, because I prefer thrillers or more serious drama over comedies but maybe this time, Mayurapriya managed to convince me otherwise. Of the three plays that I managed to catch at Kodai Nataka Vizha, Vivahamalai.com was by far the best. If they manage to correct the minor flaws that were noticeable to the audience, I am sure this play will be even better.

Vivahamalai.com put a large smile on the face of the audience with its opening scenes and managed to keep it there for the rest of the play. The team behind this play has managed to set the bar high for themselves this time and I do hope that they continue to try and surpass themselves with their future productions. Until next time;

Peace!!!