Bedtime stories - sleep through it, and you won't miss a thing.

Too much inexperience, and it showed. A little too evidently.

Pause and lights off, two theatre troupes came together to give life to playwright Priyanka Das Gupta's "Bedtime stories", a tale of two lovers who met during college, fell in love, married,and then seperated. While the premise sounded interesting with the catch phrase being a sexual encounter between the two characters that gets them to come to terms with their unextinguished attracting towards each other, the play's treatement fails at multiple levels. But thats not to say that the script wasn't without its share of glitches.

It sounded like hard core drama, where one would be left weeping for a couple that was so wrong for each other , yet couldn't stay without the other one; after all, havent we all been there. Instead, what was laid out was a buffet of quite mundane, energy less sequences that got one rolling on the seat waiting for it to get over. The actors were way too raw, and I have to put it down as the director's failure.

Siddhanth K.S, the director of the play, who also essayed one of the roles was quite below par on both accounts. His performance,like most of his other actors , lacked energy. The basics of theatre were not in place - no one projected their voice, no one was enunciating, no one had that drive, that energy that makes theatre what it is.

The actors who stood out were Kshema and Ananth. While Kshema had tremendous energy and bouyancy about her, Ananth showed potential to be a good actor.

The production value however was good, with good brochures and quite decent background score.

A last word for the playwright. While the language in the play was seemingly to give it a natural touch, the playwright forgot that she had to still respect the stage. The repeated use of everyday jargon like "you know" punctuated at every sentence was annoying and gave a bland taste to the play.

But it has to be understood that they are first timer. however,that excuse will work only once. I do hope that when this group comes out with their next production they would have come some way to become better than what they are right now.

Bedtime stories is a must skip, but here's wishing them luck with their future endeavors.