It is a story on the dark side of people and their deep dark secrets that lurk just beneath the surface, always ready to come out when under pressure. That is what Rahul da Cunha’s play “Pune Highway” has for you. This much-acclaimed writer-director trays grim reality with his five characters and gives you a great deal of comedy as the script unfolds into an exciting and dramatic murder mystery.

A “Rage” production presented by the Durga Das Foundation in collaboration with The Tribune and Spice Telecom, the story takes you to a dingy room in a seedy hotel room just off the Bombay-Pune highway, a shelter for three young men who are on the run. From this, it is a roller-coaster ride for the audience too, because you do not know what is going to hit you next — nail-biting suspense, mudslinging or unadulterated comedy.

Drama unfolds with barbed remarks on each other as three friends Pramod, Vishno and Nick tries to come to terms with the murder of their friend. More twists come from a casual fling by one of them and again from a blackmailing attempt by a boy at the hotel.

How they cope with pressure is the crux of the play and what makes the play gripping is their separate ways of doing it. Vishno remarks aptly, “You lie, Nick stammers and I joke when we buckle under pressure.” The minutest details on the sets and realistic acting by the cast has made the play something worth seeing, which otherwise may have easily been termed as the stage version of a run-of-the-mill kind of Bollywood thriller. Dialogue is another strong point of the play. Comedy churns out of tension, characters are assassinated with friendliness and ease, not just giving an insight into the person under attack, but also into the person who is doing it, by the degree of venom and pettiness. Even the set using bare minimum furniture and the background music gives a realistic touch to the show, helping one to flow with the story. The cast includes Bugs Bhargava Krishna as Nick, Rehan Engineer as Vishno, Rajit Kapoor as Pramod, Yamini Namjoshi as Mona and Shankar Sachdeva as Sakharam.

Critics be damned… English theatre sure has its own vocabulary, a language that manages to tune into its audiences. And well-known theatre person Rahul da Cunha’s latest directorial venture, Pune Highway, once again proved that English theatre exists, with it all its vibrancy and verve. Now it’s authentic Indianness too. With a taut script and racy dialogue, the play told a tale of friendship, of betrayal, of survival and self-preservation. Taking off from a highway incident where three friends desert the fourth one (mauled by hoodlums) to shack up in some seedy hotel, the play was about friendship under test and trial. But much more lay in store. Moments of revelation…how the much-married Pramod ‘needs’ affairs on the side…why Vish, the successful MNC executive, wants to sniff coke… and what makes Niki stammer. All cleverly woven in with hilarious digressions. The funny bone of the writer was tingling by way of some wonderful catchy one-liners. Thought provoking assertions came too, as Vish confessed, “I hide behind jokes. Niki stammers and you lie…” implying we all have our own idiosyncrasies that need to be camouflaged. The actors were almost flawless, slipping easily into their parts: Bugs Bhargava Krishna superb as the stammering Niki, Rajit Kapur as the money-making Marwari Pramod, Rehaan Engineer as the suave executive, Shanker Sachdeva as the manipulative Marathi Hindi –speaking waiter (again a skilful directorial ploy) and Yamini Namjoshi providing the love interest angle. The play didn’t make any socially or politically-correct statements. But this delving into the recesses of the human mind did make a fine theatrical statement. That theatre needn’t be a big yawn but can be (rather is) entertaining, leaving you with some food to chew upon.