No, the upper case is not to add emphasis or to draw wily attention to the article. It’s Bangalore’s latest comedy show.
The IT Show, cheekily abbreviated TITS, is the newest sketch comedy offering, which has completed only four shows and has already got the city roaring with laughter by emulating the quirks that abound the IT sphere; Bangalore’s Silicon Valley (Hmm). It follows the life of an IT job aspirant named Rahul (played by Kanan Gill) intricately from the time he applies for a job (thanks to his nagging parents) to the time he meets competition at the work place, encounters dysfunctional employees, parties with his fellow geeks and eventually gets laid off.
Presented by The Polished Bottoms, a group started by Bangalore-based comedians Sanjay Manaktala, Praveen Kumar and Sundeep Rao, the show first premiered at Alliance Française in March this year.
Here’s a snapshot of their latest show that happened at Jagriti Theatre, Whitefield, Bangalore on May 11 that tells you why this show is a must watch.
Stand-up Camaraderie
At one point in the show, when our protagonist Rahul is in his third and final round of the interview with the dreaded HR department, the lights go off, accidentally. This power failure is not a part of the sketch (or so the audience is led to believe). Anyway, Rahul is left on stage making improvisational conversations with the HR lady (played by Kenneth Sebastian). Rahul thinks touching the HR lady inappropriately in the dark will go unnoticed (no one’s supporting this), but just then the lights come on. Not only is the audience, but even the performers are thrown into a fit of unintended laughter, which was a delight to watch. We’re sure every show has such surprisingly honest moments.
The Sketch-Over-Standup Format
Stand-up comedy is a recent phenomenon that has got the country plugged in. But Improv and Sketch comedy, two off-shoots if you will, have a charm of their own and promise an unmistakable guarantee of guffaws, which perhaps stand-up does not live up to. While stand-up comedy has takers by the score, The IT Show uses enactments to tell you a story that you go back home with; one that makes the humour a rounded experience, making you blush at the idiosyncrasies because let’s face it, you would’ve all said things like ‘Nim Ajji’ (Your Grandmother) and ‘Thoo’ (Spit of Rage) in your work place.
Minor Nuances
Sanjay Manaktala’s Indian accent (if you didn’t know, he’s from ‘the Amrika’), Sundeep Rao and Vamsidhar Bhogaraju’s portrayal of quintessentially typical characters, playing to the Kannada-to-English lost in translation humour where you hear words like ‘womo’ (homo) and ‘ox’ (ask) in common parlance, make you realize you’re headed for splits.
Ahmed Shariff and Kenneth Sebastian
Firstly, a special mention goes out to Ahmed Shariff, who had nearly three 3-minute-long monologues in the entire one and half hour long show, managing to fling crowds into fits of laughter with his witty punch lines laced with limericks, which were used as scene transitions to tell Rahul’s story. Secondly, Kenneth Sebastian (who essayed the HR Lady) and a host of other characters, takes the cake with his deadpan innocence that he plays out every scene with.
IT yet Not IT
While the premise is a Wipro-centure (as said in the play) setting, the humour and jokes are kept broadly generic for the sake of the non-IT employee. So if you’re wondering IT jokes are not meant for you, you will be delighted to learn that IT jokes are for all, much like the pleasantly harmless Sardar puns.
You can catch the next show of T.I.T.S in July. Meanwhile, follow The Polished Bottoms on Facebook here.
