This is a copy of one of the letters that Orlando pinned on every tree in the forest professing his love for Rosalind and I loved how they used the entire theatre, pinned stuff on the wooden poles and made entrances from among the crowd and everything else about it! I highly recommend the show if you are even remotely interested in Shakespeare’s work!

Some of the brilliantly lit scenes that I managed to catch included the green light at the scene where Woyzeck stabs Marie, the tavern itself was brilliantly lit and with the paper mache created a very nice effect!

What I like about Rangashankara apart from the brilliant facilities that it provides for theatre companies and the lovely space that it is, is the discipline it has inculcated in the Bangalore Theatre going audience. Watching a play at Rangashankara is akin to boarding a plane, you make your way there well in advance or you miss it! It doesn’t matter whether you have paid for the ticket or not! It took some time to get used to it, but we are all better off because of it!

After getting our tickets sorted out by the lovely folks at ‘IndianStage‘, we headed to Rangashankara to a packed house which was treated to some nice theatre. Now for those of you who don’t know the play already, this is an Oscar Wilde comic love story with lots of mistaken identities, loads of madness, some great dialogue and an overall brilliant script.

Team Evam who put this together (In the picture above, pardon the quality, I did not have my camera with me and had to use my phone!) did a good job of it overall but I left the hall thinking it could be so much more! While it wasn’t something in particular that I can put my finger on and point out that was lacking, it was the overall production itself that could have been a notch higher.

Now I am not complaining at all about my time there! I totally enjoyed the play and I remember Shilpa and I sitting in the absolute last row in Rangashankara could follow all that was happening and also, were laughing out on many occasions. The actors themselves had great comic timing and ran through the play at a nice pace that was not hard to follow.

My grouse however, was that, at many times during the play, I remember catching myself thinking, they are just saying those lines out like they are at rehearsal! or rather a line check! when you say something naughty or mischevious, there wasn’t at times, the expression that goes with it. Also, there could be improvements made to the dance sequences in the beginning which I thought din’t come together quite well today, but it might just have been today!

In all, I would definitely recommend this to anyone. If you get a chance to watch the production, please do! Its totally worth it and as a fan of dialogue filled theatre, I certainly did not lose interest through the play. The script itself is brilliant and will thoroughly entertain you and the production does a good job of getting the story across.

I fully loved the character of Lady Bracknell, played by Shannon who I thought stood out during the whole show and would like to specially congratulate her for her performance.

The music was exemplary and the singers were mind blowing!!! the whole production was a complete mindblowing experience!

The music definitely reminds us of how great the band was!