A play whose mainstay is the gruesome killing of 3 children isn’t really the place where you’d expect doses of humour dotting the grim landscape filled with mentally retarded killers ,crazy parents who crucify their kids and their like.
But this is precisely what made ‘Confessions’ - A play by a group from the Prithvi Theatre stand out as a brilliant and tactfully executed performance.
The story is about a writer who for no rhyme or reason finds himself sitting face to face with a bunch of hard nosed detectives ready to wrangle out a confession.The writer it turns has been writing consistently on the theme of children who have been either tortured by their parents,had their toes cut off by hooded strangers or experienced other unforgiving circumstances.
As it plays out ,someone has been going around killing children in the deranged fashion lifted straight from his book.
The play goes on to explore how the writer came into chalking up such gruesome tales,why his brother is a dimwit and ultimately who is behind the killings.
The play is filled with short stories which put a unique spin to things that are otherwise looked at with a fearful mind;a notable one being ‘the Pillowman’ that convinces the audience into condoning the act of suicide by a child as a compassionate and agony preventing choice. Its blend of the the horrifying served up with the funny that keeps the audience from going into a complete depression.Brilliantly executed today by the team from Prithvi Theatre who managed to stir up tensions and then diffuse then amidst bursts of laughter(The audience was a bit too generous in this area i suppose) ,‘Confessions’ was something to be watched again