Lights Out!: A Review
Lights Out! by Manjula Padmanabhan finds new expression through Dnyanesh Moghe’s direction and his actors. The play, which was performed on the 10th of August 2019 at the Multipurpose Hall, Central Library, Panjim, was inspired by a true incident that took place in 1982 in Santa Cruz, Bombay, albeit with fictional characters recreating it. The play commences with an unnerving, unearthly cry, evoking a sense of trepidation and suspense. We are told that the protagonist Leela has been hearing these distressing cries for some time and been pressuring her husband Bhaskar to call the police. Although she is not certain of the reason for the cries, innate intuition does not allow her to dismiss them as anything but the result of a crime. Bhaskar, on the other hand, finds every excuse in the book to avoid calling the police. He deems it fit, however, to call his friend Mohan to watch the ‘spectacle’ that we learn he has been witness to. What follows is an inane justification of the clearly un