CONTACT PLAYWRIGHT

Synopsis

The play begins with a play within. A shabby house where the daughter is a newly minted policewoman and the father an abusive drunkard. After a war of words, the girl shoots her father dead when he hurts her mother. The scene changes to a swanky beach house where a cast party is to be held. Most of the participants have acted in the play. One is the director. A retired colonel arrives with his sister-in-law who was also in the cast. Conversation moves to the Colonel’s past and his wife’s suicide after she was raped by a white armyman in Wellington, Nilgiris. Soon they have an uninvited guest, Prince, a former policeman who first claims his car has a problem and later says he was told to come there. The Colonel seems disturbed seeing him. He was the investigating officer during his wife’s suicide, and it was he who had shot the rapist. Suddenly, the whole evening seems to become an offshoot of that fateful time in the Nilgiris. Later, Prince is found murdered. Tension mounts and it soon becomes evident that someone is orchestrating all this to solve the mystery of what really happened in the Nilgiris so many years ago. The play ends with a long monologue by the real culprit and a manner of poetic justice. The play has been published by Adisakrit as part of an anthology titled 'Midnight Hotel and Other Plays', available on Amazon.

Duration

100   Minutes

No of characters

7