Funny Money won’t tickle your funny bone

The predictable plot over shadowed the otherwise acceptable acting at PNCA.

ISLAMABAD: The quality of fluff is to be momentarily pleasing and instantly forgettable. Light entertainment certainly qualifies. It is pointless, adrift, thread bare and in large doses, irritating. I do not wish to be excessively captious nor discouraging but Funny Money (running from the 4th to the 14th of November at the PNCA) was more rile than romp. Yes it had its moments and in one particular case was ecstatically performed but running at almost a 100 minutes long, it overstayed its welcome and yet was sadly unaware of this.

Director Atif Siddique (who went strangely unmentioned at curtains as did the rest of the crew or mayhap modesty got the better of them) and producer Javed Saeedi, adapt a play originally written by Ray Cooney. Funny Money opens in dreary London where an unassuming accountant Henry Perkins – played by the mysteriously single named Ashraf – comes upon a large sum of dirty money on the tube home.

He breaks the news to his wife, who immediately launches into histrionics and cries foul play. The plot, with the introduction of bent coppers, family friends, wife swapping, solicitation (the funnier moment of the night) and the token Sikh taxi driver soon devolves into a comedy of errors with a few laugh-out-loud moments (thanks to Ashraf) but remaining generally in the area of skittish giggles and tepid humour. And oh for how so long!

Plays that linger on indefinitely run the risk of being repetitive. As characters enter and exit the stage from left and right, throwing in the odd, half-baked innuendo and gyratory motion, the format begins to become predictable.

One cannot fault the present production for the quality of its source material, but may surely ask why this farce was chosen in the first place. The world of theatre must certainly have better to offer.

Overall, the acting was adequate. Ashraf was unfaltering and unwavering for the entire length of the play, an energy and investment that is very appreciable. His ‘spouse’ was at times shrill and at times amusing (when squiffy) but the de rigueur delivery that is expected of actors in Islamabad; pitchy shouts made the lady sound piercing and her laughs, cackled like the wicked witch.

The rest of the cast chipped in enough to guide the play along yet this stress upon affecting accents that is so common in plays these days such as most recently in the dreadful Let Me In should be seriously reconsidered.

It would be disingenuous to recommend the play as I personally did not like it. But tastes differ and if that is reason enough then by all means pay it a visit.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 6^th, 2010.