“Mrs. Krishnan’s Party,” the lively current touring show from New Zealand on offer at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, is the kind of thing you might expect to see at a fringe festival, especially one riding the immersive wave.
You are ushered into the theater by a genial man named James (Justin Te Honihana Pokaihau Rogers), who says he is a college student who rents a room from Mrs. Krishnan (Kalyani Nagarajan). James, you learn, has decided to surprise his landlady with a party to celebrate Onam, a harvest festival celebrated mostly by the people of Kerala on India’s Malabar Coast; his agenda is to dissuade her from selling her shop and retiring. We theatergoers are the guests, the setting is the back room of Mrs. Krishnan’s store, and the next 80 minutes are filled with schtick and bits of comic business gluing together what clowns like to call “crowd work,” which is the fine art of using the audience to generate material.
Since it’s a harvest festival, Mrs. Krishnan and James also have a big pot on their stove and some lucky members of the audience get involved with shoveling in some tasty ingredients and giving the yummy dal a stir. At the end of the night, you can stay and eat, if you wish. A delicious prospect if, like me, you could eat Indian food every night and die happy.
This very compact show from a group called Indian Ink Theatre (Justin Lewis is the director) has been touring for four months, mostly to arts centers in smaller markets. Here in Chicago, where we take our sketch comedy and improv very seriously, these 80 minutes of material feel a tad thin and the performances, well, just a hair one-dimensional. Subtle, this party is not.
And if any show could use the appearance of a third character to mix things up, and I’m not talking about the dal, it’s this one.
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It’s a bit like you are watching an Indian version of “Tony ‘n’ Tina’s Wedding” with only Tony and Tina in the cast.
Still, for those who know and love the culture, food and people of Southwest India, the warm touchstones of memory surely would flow here and I saw people around me with broad grins on their faces the entire time. My very game fellow attendees were very entertaining as they answered questions about their relationships, donned celebratory attire, inflated balloons and stood up and danced on command.
Nagarajan clearly works from a base of love and Rogers could not be a more likable host, evoking the people skills and inherent curiosity that crowd work needs. The show evidences the warm inclusivity for which Kiwis are known. Suffice to say that what you are buying is right there in the title.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic
Review: “Mrs. Krishnan’s Party” (2.5 stars)
When: Through April 26
Where: Upstairs Studio at Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier, 800 E. Grand Ave.
Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes
Tickets: $59-$90 at 312-595-5600 and chicagoshakes.com