I recall a character remembering from her childhood the broken pieces of blue green glass that lined the seashore.

A hush fell on an enthusiastic crowd in the auditorium as soon as the lights dimmed. The event that had called for an audience of a thousand people was The Blue Mug, a production of The Company Theatre and directed by Atul Kumar. Enter onstage the talented cast comprising Rajat Kapoor, Vinay Pathak, Ranvir Shorey, Sheebha Chadha, Munish Bhardwaj and Shipra Singh.

Inspired by the book The Man who Mistook his Hat for his wife by George Sacks, the play is a series of recollections by the characters from events in their past. Memories of childhood playtime, adolescent naughtiness and deaths of family members are strung together to form a play that was engaging in its coexisting pathos and humour. Ranvir Shorey plays Joginder Singh whose memory comes to a standstill at 1983 even while the world has moved on to 2011. His appointments with a psychiatrist reveal the manner in which his memory plays tricks on him. The recollections by the other characters parallel Joginder’s case in which they are able to recall vividly the past at the expense of the present.

If ever there was drama that relied heavily on lighting techniques, here was one such. The play involved the artistic interaction between light and shadow. Such a blending of light and dark mimicked the manner in which the characters slip in and out of memories. Sparse but strategic stage settings added to the visual drama. The visual appeal of the play was complemented by the solid and sober notes of cellos.

For some, the play may not appeal as it is a series of episodes placed one after another. Remove a few episodes or replace them, the play will still be what it is. Perhaps this is the charm of improvisation theatre where the actors lend their own lives and ideas to the characters and events featured in the play. The talent expressed by the actors shows what a loss Bollywood incurs in terms of quality owing to its stereotypical characterisations and narratives.

Why was the play titled The Blue Mug? My memory plays tricks on me now and this much I remember. Blue green glass and a woman in orange. The mention of a blue mug evades me.