Like every year, the comedy actors of our small screen business have yet again geared up to throw parodies and satires at all that have been happening around us since last year. Though it was the MaHa Jodi (Madan Krishna Shrestha and Hari Bansha Acharya) who incepted the trend of hosting a festival to make people laugh over both serious stuffs and such issues that are mostly overlooked, it has however been three years that MaHa Jodi’s fans haven’t been able to get to see these two comedy heroes act during the fiesta.
Since the last few years, other aspiring comedians like Manoj Gajurel, Dipak Raj Giri, Deepa Shree Niraula, Nirmal Sharma, Ravi Dangol, Jitu Nepal, Daman Rupakheti, Sitaram Kattel, and Kedar Ghimire are following the footsteps of the MaHa Jodi and have been conducting Gai Jatra Mahotsav annually.
This year was no exception, too. Divided into two teams, Nepal Academy Hall on Wednesday evening saw actors like Manoj Gajurel, Dipak Raj Giri, Deepa Shree Niraula and Sitaram Kattel mimic, caricature and enact funny acts. At the same time, City Hall on Exhibition Road witnessed Dinesh DC and his team doing similar jobs.
The Hajmola Tite Jire Meri Bassai Gai Jatra Mahostav at the Academy Hall had a huge number of audiences in comparison to the people who showed up at the inaugural day of the festival in City Hall.
Caricature artiste and comedian Manoj Gajurel hosted the show throughout at Academy Hall last Wednesday where Ram Chandra Poudel of Nepali Congress was the chief guest. Meanwhile, Jhalanath Khanal showed up to laugh along with the comedians performing at City Hall on Thursday evening.
Though both locales have the best comedy actors performing onstage, this year’s Gai Jatra Mahotsav was not up to the mark. At moments, it was disappointing to see how the artistes have failed to research more on exploring multiple themes. At both the Academy Hall and City Hall, the prime focus for this Gai Jatra Mahotsav has been the Vice President’s stand on his taking oath in Hindi, the election of Madhav Kumar Nepal as Prime Minister, the massive diarrhea in West Nepal, and border encroachment.
It was nice to see actors throwing sharp and blunt satires upon the said issues for the first few acts. But the repetition of the plots and storylines became monotonous as the acts went on.
The artistes have failed to catch other issues of the society. Though each of their acts has a social message to give and though they have justified the problems of diarrhea and political disturbances strongly, the laughter factor goes down when each group goes on dramatizing the common issues over and again. At times, you feel like asking yourself when to laugh. Seriously, some moments are too dull, and you really don’t find the humor into the stage dramas.
In addition, the technical problems repeating time and again during the acts take away all its beauty. The unpleasant power cut, the lighting problems and actors taking too long to come to the stage make the festival unnecessarily lengthy. Many in the audience left their seats while some were very arrogant when there was power cut for more than 15 minutes at the Academy Hall on Wednesday night.
Some other disappointing factors were a dancer stripping to entertain during the middle of the program, and each group taking more than 20 minutes to wrap up their performances made the acts lose all the humor. The long dialogues make one lose interest in it while the parody songs are too long to listen to. Besides, it’s not understandable why vulgarity has been used as a tool to make people laugh and enjoy. Most of the acts have physical jokes involved without any connection, and that was the only time when people laughed at the dramas.
The show stealer was the performances of Dipak Raj Giri’s team regarding the border encroachment by India. It was neatly directed, and genuinely funny and touching. Jitu Nepal’s satirical dohori equally made people burst into laughter, and Sitaram Kattel’s group mesmerized many by their funny expressions and humorous plots. The best thing to look for at the Academy Hall is the powerful parody poem of Sailendra Simkhada, and burlesque song by singer Tika Bhandari.
At City Hall, it was only Dinesh DC, Ravi Dangol, and Suleman Shanker who captivated the crowd. The rest didn’t make people laugh; they in fact forced them to laugh.
The festival (sigh!) will go right through to Sunday, August 30.
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