Chocolate Krishna- Taking comedy beyond MMKR

Tickets to the Crazy Creation drama Chocolate Krishna

I have seen almost all the stage plays by Manohar, S. V. Sehkar, Crazy Mohan, Kathadi Ramamurthy, Cho, Varadarajan, Y. G. Mahendran and Visu.  Chocolate Krishna is the best of the best for comedy.  Chocolate Krishna is a Tamil stage drama from Crazy Creations.  Crazy Creations is the stage group run by Crazy Mohan (http://www.crazymohan.com/) and Maadhu Balaji. Chocolate Krishna takes comedy delivery to another plateau.  It excels in almost every phase of a stage drama- delivery, dramatization, confusion, characterization, language, wit and above all - simplicity.  

Chocolate Krishna is about a typical Tamil middle-class household with common problems.  Maadhu is the breadwinner and a firm believer in Lord Krishna.  He believes that putting his trust in Krishna will solve all his misfortunes.  The story is about how the family fortunes are transformed by the arrival of a guest and how they deal with it.  The misfortunes of a normal family are turned it into a sequence of hilarious events.  Chocolate Krishna is all about the dialogues and the interaction between all the main characters.  The dialogues were all punchlines.  The best one's used the nuances of Tamil and their anatomy in English.  For my American friends, this drama would resemble the popular TV serial 'Friends' for it's ability to turn misfortune into comedy. 

Michael Madana Kama Rajan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Madana_Kama_Rajan) was the epitome of comedy in Indian movies.  It has been regarded as a landmark in Tamil cinema.  Chocolate Krishna matched this one-for-one.  MMKR had Kamal Hasaan.  Chocolate Krishna has Maadhu Balaji. Kamal Hasaan delivered dialogues in different accents.  Maadhu delivered instant reactions punchlines, like it was the first time he had heard the words.  It did not look rehearsed, even thought it was the 400th screening. 

Crazy Mohan's script flowed so well and effective that even a sub-five year-old was rolling with laughter.  Unlike movies, the presentation has to be flawless and continuous, which it was.  The jokes were counters comments or take on the Tamil words.  Also Tamil phrases were modified to work with the situation and to create a climax.  The story moved so fast that you were still rolling from the first one when the next arrives.  At some points, 5-6 comic situations were occurring almost simultaneously. At the end there was a nice moral attached to the whole drama.  This was way better than a DJ playing on the Gramophone or dancing to a live rock-n-roll music session at a 5* hotel.

Deepak Shankar and A. S. Aiyar with Crazy Mohan

We were fortunate to get front-row seats for this events, thanks to my father-in-law, Gopalie and Crazy Creations.  We were the "Extra Chairs" in the sold out show. You can see the seat number on our entry ticket.  Both Mohan and Balaji are extremely humble and polite personalities. I also found out they are brothers.  But their personalities on stage are quite the opposite.  Maadhu is always jumping off the walls, while Mohan is calm and composed.

This is a must for all and everyone that likes a rolling laugh and is familiar with Tamil.  It is unfortunate that there are no new Stage groups rising up to continue this glorious traidition.  Crazy Crations has finished 33 years of existence.  At this rate, Tamil drama will disappear within our generation.

Happy (2012) New Year everyone.

Vaishnavi, Deepak, Aiyar with Maadhu Balaji of Chocolate Krishna

Wales National Dance Company Rocks- Great performance at Music Academy Chennai

Singing Light by the Wales Dance Company at Music Academy

National Dance Company, Wales- Performance at Music Academy, Chennai
Nostalgia. Expression. Speed. Emotions.

Attended a great performance by Wales Dance Company tonight.  We were completely spell-bound and entralled.  There were two major performances- B/olero & Black Milk by Ohad Naharin and Singing Light by Stephen Petronio.  The two sections were complete contrast.

The first was a slow and in darkness with simple lighting.  The costumes were elaborate.  Elaborate is relative to contemporary dance.  There were a smaller number of dancers and the moves were a cross between jazz and ballet.  The music was in the background, not heard, rather just guiding the musicians.  Some of the moves resembled middle-eastern styles, possibly emphasizing the Israeli background of the choreographer.  Even the costumes had a Lebanese connection. The faces were always in the shadows and they slowly kept come in and out of the shadows.  The music was very well synchronized with the faces moving in and out of the shadows.  The distribution of the white, green and purples offered a contrasting touch.  The choreographer has founded his own movement called "gaga".

The second was extremely fast paced.  There was a lot of action and with uncoordinated rhythmic poses distributed generously across the stage.  It was striking how these uncoordinated actions suddenly came together.  The music was composed to the word of Dylan Thomas,possibly the most famous Welsh poet.  The clothes were just wrapped cloth with interesting cuts that showed the body poses clearly in the bright light.  The red leotards was a class act.  The artists casually come in and out of the main stage.  It resembled a market with true cacophony but the food chain keeps chugging along.  In this case, it resembled a rocket.

I found videos of their performance on Youtube.  Feel free to view them:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPmbtck35Ic->B/olero & Black Milk by Ohad Naharin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCZE-aeQfac->Singing Light by Stephen Petronio

Music Academy is a really nice hall.  It has been a long time since I have been there and the place has been done up quite well. The acoustic went without a hitch.