Unrequited humour

‘Light On Hai’ troupe performs for an almost empty hall.

KARACHI:

If 2012 marks the end of the world, then at least the Karachiites should know they have enough jokes coming their way to make them laugh right till the end. With The Agency (Saad Haroon’s troupe) and Danish Ali Live already creating a stir at the Pakistan American Cultural Centre (PACC), we now have the “Aisa Karoge Tou Kaun Ayega” troupe that performed under their new name “Light on Hai” on January 13.

The group comprises of five performers including Imran Ahmed, Minhaj Ali Askari, Saquib Sumeer, Ali Gul Pir and Afraaz Rasool, and is led by TV personality Azfar Ali, who is also the co-producer of the show, along with his wife Salma Hasan.

After the success of their TV show of the same name, which aired on ARY Digital, the troupe’s return to stage did not come as a surprise. TV show “Lipton Light On Hai” followed the format of American improv show “Whose Line Is It Anyway” and comprised of the same line-up. Surprisingly, their on stage performance turned out to be much better than their small screen stint.

The group cleverly improvised on situations that are too ridiculous to be imagined, take for example Mathira hanging from the Eiffel Tower. The “Light On Hai” gang took a jab at some of the most controversial and talked about celebrities of Pakistan including Meera and Begum Nawazish Ali, which captivated the small audience’s attention and made the show an overall hit.

Imran Ahmed stole the show with his perfect timing and command over his expressions. In one of the situations, when asked what’s the worst thing to say to someone who is about to jump from a building, Ahmed cracked, “Have you seen my Nokia charger?” — a line which made audience chuckle for a good five minutes and made Ahmed the star of the show.

Even though the troupe surpassed their own standards of wit and humour, they forgot to be politically stable in some situations. Despite Ali’s announcement at the beginning of the show that, “We don’t want to do a show of insults” the jokes became a bit offensive at times. Since there can be no retakes and since improvisers have less than a split second to think about cultural and moral sensitivities, they should have some boundary lines drilled into their heads that must not be crossed under any circumstance.

While some of the jokes left a bad taste, one still believes that the show deserved a much larger audience. Had it been marketed properly it would have been a profitable venture. The low turnout of the audience made the performance seem like a waste of puns and wit and didn’t create the ‘hall effect’ one expects from a troupe like this.

However if “Light On Hai” performs consistently and follows a better marketing strategy next time, they may give competition to The Agency, which is setting new benchmarks in the genre of stand-up comedy.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 15^th, 2012.