“The Skeleton Woman” introduces itself as a play about love, loneliness and what one must endure to be happy. What it delivers, however, is a mere skeleton of it. From obscure trimmings one pieces together the tale of a writer and his wife who are clambering up to find the ideal but are being pulled down by the actual.
The writer (an exaggerated stereotype) is perched on insanity and conjures sharks, a goose and a skeleton hand; while his wife (somewhat more grounded) attempts to tame him. What follows is a series of disoriented knick-knacks centred around ambition, completion and happiness. The plot is a quilting together of several episodes – real and delusional.
Prashant Prakash fails to portray the character with the gravitas it deserves. His performance is carried out with the casualness of a hallucinating teenager. Kalki Koechlin contrarily makes a consistent and commendable show of the writer’s wife.
