Play Review: 'Mummy Tu Aavi Kevi?'

‘Mummy, Tu Aavi Kevi?’ the title of the play as well as a recurring plea voiced by the three leading adolescents, is a Gujarati and English play directed by Manoj Shah.
Clocking in at 1 hour and 30 minutes, it tells the tale of three adolescents who, constantly being irked by their mother’s traditional habits, mannerisms, dressing sense and overall ‘Gujju-ness’, attempt to transform her into a hipper, cooler, ‘21st Century’ mom. Despite her protests, she eventually gives in to the makeover.
Laughter ensues as the kids try to juggle household responsibilities during her absence.
After her metamorphosis, as she saunters on stage in her new avatar, to the likes of ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ from the audience, and praise from her children she then immediately asserts her authority in a fit of highhandedness .The kids are flabbergasted at her behavior, prompting their speculation that they were wrong to have ever planted that seed of change and slowly coming to the conclusion that they preferred her the way she was.
Despite taking place in typical Gujarati family, it is littered with pop-culture references right from Justin Bieber to the more philosophical Franz Kafka and proves thoroughly enjoyable. It reflects a family trying to maintain a balance between traditional values and the modernity that society demands today.
The actors have done a fantastic job in portraying their characters. They have a keen sense of comic timing, deliver their lines faultlessly and keep the atmosphere alive as they dart back and forth across the stage, ensuring that your eyes are glued to the stage. The lighting for the play was good as it reflecting the varying moods of the characters. The performance was at Horniman Circle Gardens, a quiet and peaceful place to watch the story unfold.
The play poses a classic dilemma which would be faced by countless others in their lives. Do you pick on each and every little nuance, habit or trait of the person, and try to change them to accommodate your own needs? Or do you accept them as they are and promise to love them unconditionally, despite their blemishes and imperfections?
Sure, the play is aimed primarily at kids and adolescents, exemplifying the importance of a mother as the real well-oiled machine behind a family, adept at keeping the spinning plates in their positions with a stipend of only love and affection from her family. But it also exhibits basic human behavior: the fact that we’re afraid of change and don’t want anything disastrous to happen. Yet we go and try to change everyone and everything, for our own benefit and our own good.