Mission Malligapoo is an amiably overstuffed WWII drama

Agam Theatre Lab certainly does not lack ambition. Formed in 2019, its momentum was arrested by the Covid-19 pandemic, but since then, the Tamil-language theatre company has ramped up its efforts.

- Ong Sor Fern Arts Editor

(AGAM THEATRE LAB)

It went from staging Cultural Medallion recipient P. Krishnan's radio adaptation of George Orwell's Animal Farm in 2022 to 2023's Twin Murder In The Green Mansion, adapted from an English language script.

Mission Malligapoo, a co-production with Esplanade Theatres on the Bay, is the company's second outing for Kalaa Utsavam - Indian Festival of Arts.

Scripted by Karthikeyan Somasundaram and Syed Ashratullah, the original work is an amiably overstuffed affair about a multi-ethnic group of misfits who find themselves bonding together through the fiery crucible of the Japanese Occupation.

Whether you take to this production's kooky charms depends on your tolerance for Bollywood-inflected storytelling, with random musical numbers and abrupt shifts in tone from melodramatic declamations to weepy sentimentality.

Judging from the audience's reactions including moments of unscripted hilarity in the second half when two sets of audience members trying to sneak out early encounter an offstage actor valiantly trying to keep in character the play certainly succeeded in engaging a mass audience.