The Dramatic Arts - Neithal

While watching Neithal, my perception of what makes a play “Good” came into question. How do you define a good play? Is it a good play if it follows certain arbitrary rules set by critics? Is it a good play if all the actors do an amazing job? Is considered a good play if the audience have a great time?

The very scale by which I classify plays as good or bad is based on personal preferences and opinions and the very fact that Neithal is a play made by a very close friend calls into question the integrity of any review or critique I might express. Despite that however, I feel that Neithal has a very paradoxical sense to it that I really want to explore from two different perspectives. “The Intended Audience” and “The critic”

Neithal had a unique advantage right from its conceptualization and that the director, Praveen, knew the general make-up of the audience who will be viewing the play; College students between the ages of 19 and 25 and, I am sure even he knows this, he has crafted something that has a maximum appeal to that specific age group.

He has, in a way, taken this small piece of knowledge, and used it to hack the system and sculpt the play in such a way that maximizes appeal to the majority of the audience. This is no small feat and that is one of the first things that impressed me the moment the play started. On the intended audience, every single scene had the desired effect; and most importantly without him needing to prime us for it.

Neithal made a vast majority of the audience laugh when it wanted them to, feel introspective when it wanted them to, feel uncomfortable when it wanted them to and feel triumphant when the feeling was called for. Neithal had a small part of me, the 20 year old college student with no knowledge of theatre, hooked from the very beginning, as I am sure it was evident, most of the audience who fit into the category.

Keeping in mind the extremely short attention span of youngsters today, Neithal manages to stay on its feet, pulling us in with jokes and leaving us introspective in the end. The ability to make youngsters sit down and watch a stage play is something that must be appreciated at all costs.

Whatever shortcomings that I express in the next section of this “Write-up” I will have to concede that Praveen has proven both his competence and unprecedented potential as a director, with a unique vision.

Discussing Neithal from a critical stand point goes a lot into the nitty-gritty of, like I said in the beginning, what makes a play good. Some of this may be objective and some may be subjective, but I have tried my level best to make sure that any personal preferences I may have are not represented here.

As an audience member I loved Neithal, but as a critic I thought Neithal is a competent play that shows competence and traces of a unifying vision but has some serious issues that stop it from becoming a good play.

Purely from a writing perspective, Praveen’s competence that is displayed in the latter two thirds of the play is severely lacking in the former one third. Most of the jokes were, while extremely funny, unfortunately derivative. It was almost as if Praveen chose to play it safe and stick to what has worked in the past. A lot of the jokes seemed like ones most people would have heard before, just executed in a professional manner.

The first four scenes in the play are meant as satire directed at the political parties of Tamil Nadu and all of it works because it requires no amount of work from the audience part to understand. An audience does not need context to understand the joke because our day to day lives is the context. What this does, in my opinion at least, is it reduces the effort and strain on the playwright thus making it possible to get the most laughs with the least amount of effort. The trend of using jokes that work without any setup aside, most of the jokes while extremely hilarious seemed too familiar at times which also left something to be desired

Fortunately the play does not end with the first few scenes, and Praveen does get to flex his writing muscles and when they do shine it definitely is a sight to behold. He managed to convey genuine emotion through his words and in a few instances I saw some of the audience members sniffling.

After the political satire there is a complete 180 in terms of tone and the story shifts to one that mirrors the heart breaking reality of the fishermen of Tamil-Nadu, and the apparent lack of any attention towards their struggles. This story constitutes of the latter two thirds and this is where, despite all its flaws, Praveen’s directorial ability shines through.

With a cast composed almost completely of amateurs without much experience in theatre, what the director has done with the resources and talent available must be appreciated. The entire cast can be divided into three sections based on their performance, extremely good, perfectly serviceable and inexperienced, with most of the cast members sitting comfortably in the “Perfectly Serviceable category”

The stand out performances were from Aravind, who played a fisherman who, if I am not mistaken, is named Daniel, A female actress who played the girl who lost her husband and father, Vignesh Parker who was thoroughly comfortable in his role as OPS, alias OS and finally Siva (I will mention him again) who had the final monologue. I may not know the official names of their characters, but the actors who played Kaiko and Tamilisai were also really good in their roles.

The grey-haired fisherman, the other politicians, the photo journalist, the chief editor, the chief of police were all part of the “Perfectly serviceable category” They did their roles justice and I didn’t particularly have anything negative to say about their performances. They could have been better integrated and a bit more polished, but I think they are deserve a solid Okay.

Unfortunately, the female reporter, her colleague, and one odd character who was on stage in the last scene were particularly unremarkable. The second police officer lent a quite a bit on the overacting side, almost to the point of parody where I thought he was going to be the butt of a joke, which unfortunately never came. And while, as far as I know, they are amateurs, given the job Praveen had done with the rest of the cast, I expected better. Awkward and unclear delivery and unnatural positioning on stage made them seem that much more inexperienced. But, as they say, the vest actors start somewhere and this, I hope, will be the start of their journey towards becoming really good actors.

The flow and tone of the play was also a bit uneven. The complete 180 from comedy to seriousness apart, the conflict of the play, since it is based in reality, is something that is not given a clear cut solution but despite this has a triumphant scene where a part of the conflict is resolved, but not completely, leaving the play in something of a Limbo, where we are left to wonder as to what the actual completion of the story truly is.

The structure is also somewhat confusing, we get comedic scenes in the beginning with a bit of setup, a turn into seriousness and an explanation of the crux of the problem as the woman who lost her husband and father tells her story to the chief editor. When he refuses to print the story the journalists decide to find other ways to share the story, the failure of this leads to them not knowing what to do.

Elsewhere, near the sea, the fishermen are having a protest demanding that lifeguards be sent into the ocean to save the fishermen caught in the water because of a storm. The policemen and the navy are stalling because of the adverse conditions and also because of the politicians who, under the pretext of providing help spew lies in public.

This all comes to a head when Daniel, a fisherman, attacks a politician who comes to speak and ask the fishermen to stop their protest, and lying about the help he is providing. He is taken into custody, one heart-breaking monologue later, we find that the navy and the coast guard decide to take action.

The best part of the play happens here in the form of a shadow theatre. We see fishermen, catching fish, getting caught in the storm, two of the three drowning and the one survivor is saved by the Navy in a patriotic display of fellowship. This part is truly innovative, rousing and inspiring.

Then there is another epilogue by Siva, presumably the man who has been saved from drowning, detailing, once again, the plight of the fishermen community. The monologue tells about their trials and tribulations and while the writing is masterful and rousing the play ends on a powerfully sad note which appears to say that it is the fate of fishermen to suffer as long as inept politicians continue to reign and decisive action is not taken for their welfare.

The play, till the shadow theatre bit has a sort of consistent flow to it, and in essence we see that despite the decisions made by politicians with their self-interest in mind, the navy and the coast guard come together in a rousing display of humanity and save the drowning fisherman.

When the final monologue is added to it, it creates this weird addition that seems necessarily tacked on and completely undermines the message that the play portrayed in the shadow theatre bit. Siva’s monologue while earnest, heart-breaking and extremely truthful left me feeling weird and incomplete as if the play was missing a scene of closure. Had it ended with the shadow theatre the feeling would have been that much more powerful.

Of all the dialogues spoken on stage, excluding the jokes, all of them were brilliantly written and at the same time, preachy.

I read somewhere that watching a play is like being a voyeur, you are seeing something that is not meant for an audience. Here it was almost as if the characters were addressing the audience directly, and while the dialogue does have impeccable finesse, very rarely does it bode well when characters appear to preach on stage.

Another part which took away from my viewing pleasure was the apparent lack of music. Maybe because I am used to having music in the plays I watch, I expected it here too, but the surprising lack of it left me wondering. I feel that the play could have benefited a lot from Music, especially during the scene transitions, the scene where the woman narrates her story to the reporters and even some of the silences when the characters are walking on the stage.

While monologues and silences go really well together, I feel that here, music would have elevated the emotions that much more. The shadow theatre bit is an excellent example of how music can add so much flavour to the scene.

The only other gripes I can point out if I choose to nit-pick is the actors not riding the laughter, a few missed light cues and maybe some better mic positioning.

Maybe the perfect way of explaining this would be to say that, Neithal was like watching a Theru Koothu on stage. The characters were often times exaggerated, the actors shouted a lot and it had a lot of monologues, and preaching for the audience. If Praveen intended to bring a Theru Koothu to the stage, he has succeeded completely. If the idea was to tell a story, in the form of a drama, well there are certain changes to be made in the execution.

But what matters is that it thoroughly entertained the audience and showed the potential that the people behind Neithal possess and their passion to become better at their craft.

Neithal encouraged me to break my hiatus on writing and what makes it that much more special is that I have never written 2000 words in one sitting. So just as Neithal has done for me, I sincerely hope that the 2100 words here, mostly me pointing out flaws (According to me at least), only encourage Praveen and his team to get better at his craft.

Peace!