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A scene from Sure Thing

By Alifiya Khan

It was probably the shortest play we had ever watched. From start to finish, it took all of 10 minutes. But the important part was what those ten minutes held.
Even as the curtains came down on the first 40-minute play The Bear by Anton Chekhov, the expectations had been high as it had done justice to the Russian playwright’s original work. We waited patiently in the semi-occupied Nehru Memorial Hall for the next play, Sure Thing, an adaptation of contemporary American playwright David Ives’ play by the same name.
And what it offered was an experience. Presented by theatre group Orange Reason, the 10 minute play, directed by Sumedh Sarojini and presented by a cast of three — Pooja Kshatriya, Jatin Saraf and the director himself — had us gripped. From the first bell itself, we found it difficult to take our eyes off the stage as the characters revealed a new trait every two seconds.
On the face of it, the plot of the play is simple — boy meets girl reading in a cafe and asks if the chair is taken. They begin to talk but each time the conversation goes off track, a bell rings and they start over. The conversation continues until they get the right answer and the conversation continues onto newer subjects, ‘redoing’ all the wrong answers until they perfect their compatibility. But what appears as a simple play that combines comedy and fantasy, is a stroke of genius by Ives. The neat
little device — the bell — that takes the couple “back in time” allowing them to correct what was wrong, leaves us wishful of such a bell in real life to allow conversations to start over from a wrong note.
The entire play revolves this single scene about the chance encounter. With no background music, the set was made up of just two chairs and a table put out in the centre of the stage and basic lighting — the effect was a minimalist look which worked in favour of the act. It proved that a good production does not require much more than an intelligent script and competent actors.
Using the bell to their full advantage, the script is used to keep the audience in splits and is even Indianised to adapt to the local sensibilities. For example, the bell rings when the character is discussing his political affiliations and he professes to be a Modi follower or AAP party supporter. It rings when he says he is from Bhandup or Bhiwandi or Byculla, until he gets the correct response suiting the girl’s sensibilities. The bell also rings towards the fairytale ending, when the couple eventually fall in love; he introduces himself as Rahul and she responds by saying she is Anjali.
Sure Thing allowed the lead actors, Rahul (Sumedh) and Anjali (Pooja) to display a vast amount of versatility, which the actors in this performance did impressively. But the characters often lapsed into a strange mix of British and Indian-English; we would rather they stuck to one accent.
All in all, not a bad investment to spare 10 minutes of your time.