Rage Production’s Pune Highway is a telling account of the dynamic of friendships. The play’s plot chalks out the aftermath of a murder on the Pune Highway. The victim’s three friends Promod, Vishnu and Nicholas find refuge from the incident at the squalid ‘Hotel Moonligt’, where they go through a spectrum of guilt, nostalgia, laughter, fear and aggression. To add to their woes, Promod’s fling Mona, daughter of politico Sanjay Mansekar threatens them with letting on their secret. What follows are a series of what-nexts.
Pune Highway, is a relatively gripping and lively play with many twists and turns punctuated with social commentary, language related jokes, one-liners and other devices used to elicit humour. While they work at one level, they also take away from the play’s main thread. The act has none of the urgency or murkiness that follows murder and you wonder if these three men have genuinely lost a friend to murder or if they are just three friends, making confessions and conversations, on a casual outing. Read more...
