A laugh riot

There’s no better way to spend a lazy Saturday evening than listening to a series of stories. And if the stories are enacted, it gets even better. The Madras Players presented Neil Simon’s The Good Doctor, to a packed hall in Sheraton Chola on Saturday. PC Ramakrishna don-ned the role of the writer, originally played by Christopher Plummer. The comedy has the writer narrating four short stories, which in turn are enacted alongside. The stories — The Sneeze, The Governess, Surgery and A Defenceless Creature — though varied, had one connecting thread, the narrator Ramakrishna.While he plays one of the spectators in The Sneeze, in Surgery, he narrates the pain of a patient. In the last piece, A Defenceless Creature, Ramakrishna turns a banker, Kistunov. The show opens with the writer, Ramakrishna, talking about his stories and characters. In the introductory story, The Sneeze, Ivan Cherdyakov, a worker (Karthik Govindaraghavan), is caught sneezing at his boss General Mikhail Brassilhov (Mohamed Yusuf), at an opera. Apologetic, he pleads for forgiveness that evening, but the general brushes it aside indifferently. Ivan finds himself thinking about his unruly act, meets his apathetic boss again the next day and expresses his guilt. On the third day, Ivan meets him again and shouts at his discrimination towards the working class, only to quickly apologise for his hasty behaviour. The piece ends with him contemplating about the incident, lying on his sofa, where he breathes his last.In the next story, a frightened governess (Sharanya Gopinath) finds herself unable to gather the courage to demand for the money she’s entitled to. The mistress (Mahita Suresh) manipulates the accounts and gives her a meager amount. How the governess gets her due forms the rest of the story.Another hilarious piece is Surgery, in which Sexton goes to a dentist to get his toothache treated. While he expects an easy cure, the dentist’s assistant is intent on pulling out the tooth. Here, TT Srinath, who plays Sexton and Priyanshu Mishra, who plays Kuryatin, the dental student portray the characters skillfully.  The last piece, A Defenceless Creature, undeniably steals the show. A woman (Indrani Krishnaier) goes to a banker, talks about the pathetic condition of her husband and narrates her sorrows. Though the banker has no connection with the woman, she demands that he return her debt money. The lighting and stage was taken care of by Victor Paulraj.  The Good Doctor was originally premiered in Broadway at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre in November 1973.