What can a solo act of over two hours be compared with in any other art form? A Hindustani or Carnatic classical music recital? A dance performance, say Bharatnatyam or Odissi or Kathak? A piano concert? An act in a ballet? Dastangoi? But in any classical performance the audience is aware of what to expect—what makes it memorable is the virtuoso’s unique rendition of a raga or abhinaya or a Bach or a Beethoven. If we extend the art forms to sports, then maybe a gymnastic routine, a tennis match (it’s not strictly solo)tadhana slots, a fiery spell by a fast bowler in a session of a Test match?

All of these can be riveting but to hold an entire auditoriumfor so long on a bare stage with no props (even Waiting of Godot at least has a tree), hardly any music or lighting, with just pure acting and voice modulation, to go on without a single fumble, a single false step or sour note, is an experience to behold. Director Rajat Kapoor and actor Vinay Pathak pull it off in their beloved ode to Shakespeare, Nothing Like Lear.

Pathak though makes light of the physical aspect of memorising and holding the lines for two hours. “A lot of people watch the play and say what a feat he has achieved. But it doesn’t take a genius to memorise lines, it only takes practice. I practise it 10,000 times, and I know the lines. What’s difficult is to be connected to the audience for that long, to have made them enter your world, and to make them emotionally invested in the ups and downs the character goes through, in his joys and sorrows,” he says. In a circus we are enthralled to see a dog come on to the stage, do a few tricks like jumping through a ring, playing around with a ball and exit the stage. The audience gasps but it’s no big deal for the dog. It has been trained to do this, it has practised the tricks many times, and knows nothing will go wrong, says Pathak as way of an example.

The play is whimsical, interactive and intuitive. There is Pathak at the centre of the empty stage in a clowns’s costume, looking at late comers to the auditorium, bantering with them, ‘‘It hasn’t started yet. Take your time.” When one of themrushes to his seat, Pathak remarks with a smirk, “Ah, now you are rushing.” The rest of us are wondering if this is part of the act or is the Clown waiting for everyone to settle down. This beguiling confusion, of what to believe and what’s a joke continues through the play—at first, somewhat jarringly and by the middle of it, deliciously so.

There is a running gag through the play of the Clown seemingly suffering from lethologica—trying to remember a word that’s at the tip of the tongue (TOT). For example, Pathak would turn to the audience and ask: Who’s that doctor who fixes the mind…the long word which is spelt with a ‘p’ but is pronounced as a ‘sy’? Invariably, someone from the audience supplies the word—psychiatrist. To which Pathak immediately retorts: ‘‘What did you think, I forgot my lines? That I am a fool and you are very intelligent, you know everything?’’

The person who utters the word feels chastened and the rest of us are chuckling. Only a little later, Pathak would again ask: “What’s the word, that we all have…that Proust wrote about?” Most of the audience would be suppressing a giggle, we know now it’s a bait, the idea is not to tell him, but inevitably someone from the audience mutters: “Memory”. Pathak goes hands on his hips, and everybody is doubling up. One of these TOT words is the Bard’s name itself, when he asks the audience who is that bearded, bald writer who goes thee-thou-thy…

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Pathak says the interactive part is carefully conceived to make the audience the other actor in the play. “The energy I draw from the audience is very important. As the Clown is interested in them, they are in turn part of his life,” he says. This interaction appears impromptu but is actually very cleverly written by Kapoor. The questions that are posed to the audience are devised in such a way that there can only be one or two responses to them. None of it is out of the script.

This interaction with the audience gives the play a levity which is otherwise a terrible tragedy, perhaps Shakespeare’s most gut-wrenching. The rest of it is serious theatre with astute direction by Kapoor. Despite the title, the spirit of Shakespeare’s King Lear glides through it. The noble Bard is perhaps a bit like India’s Constitution: you can amend his plays here and there but the fundamental nature of it cannot be altered.

At the heart of the play is the father-daughter relationship, as it is in King Lear. All the initial banter, all the different strands lead up to this powerful, melodramatic scene. The Clown is besotted with his daughter, the most beautiful baby right from birth. But she is growing up too fast. Before he knows it she is an adult, has a busy job, lives in another city. His calls to her go unanswered, she has no time for him. He decides to visit her house, he is outside her door, a maid tells him there is going to be a party in the house with some important guests. Finally, the daughter herself tells the father he should take up a room in a nearby hotel, they can meet later. He is turned away from outside her door. He also hears from her how controlling and domineering a father he has been, the constant pressure to prove herself she felt when growing. All of it as relevant in our internet age as it must have been in the 1600s.

Allthe instances in the play—the stormy night scene, the father’s plea to his daughtertadhana slots, the brother complex—are from King Lear, only rendered differently. “As actors, we have been trying to make Shakespeare sound normal. When we go totally classic, a lot of people just tune out. When we go completely experimental, sometimes it becomes just gimmicky. But King Lear is so relevant in every age. It’s immortal lines, it is the plague of our times, when mad men are leading blind men. It’s exactly the times we are living in,” says Pathak.