Twinkle Beauty Parlour - Not quite there, but on its way | |||||
If I were to give an one line verdict on Twinkle Beauty Parlour, then I would say - 'Not quite there, but on its way!
' What I mean is that when it started out last week, I thought my favourite producer was going wrong somewhere....but as the show entered it's second week, there were clear indications that Shrishti Arya had tightened her reins. But despite this, the show has a long way to go but to give the director and producer credit - it's difficult to transform actors who are used to melodrama into artistes who can enact a situation without twitching their eyebrows! TBP has a great theme, a never been done before story and artistes who have seldom been pitched against each other - all these originals give this show an edge to start with. Shrishti has surprised her critics and fans alike by casting 'mainstream leading ladies' as main protagonists and this again is a first for her. These 'mainstream leading ladies' are actors who are used to working within certain given parameters and TBP is not the run of the mill saas-bahu show, thus the stiffness, the stilted dialogue delievery and the odd body language to begin with. This is something that needs work on but the actors are looking and sounding more realistic as time passes by.
The show itself has a very irregular setup - based in Delhi with dysfunctional families, relationships that are still in the realm of the unexplored and characters that are not black or white, but grey. The city itself becomes the backdrop for the show and it's nuances have been intricately woven into the matrix - for example the middle class junta who want to climb up the social ladder, the wannabes who want to look good, (even if their accent is an instant give away to their middleclass upbringing) and the mothers whose only aim in life is to see their daughters married. The beauty parlour stands tall amidst these diverse people- it's symbolic of what we can be, with the help of a little help; Narayani Shastri as Ranjana who is the proprietress of this enterprise looks a little out of place in her skirt teamed with back and shoulder revealing tops (more so in Delhi! The newsapers abound with such scary stories that it's difficult for me to imagine that any girl in that city still wears such outfits!), her skills as an actor too looked questionable in the beginning, but she has shown signs of emerging out of her shell and the mystery surrounding her like a cloak has just added to her appeal.
The one character that really made an impression from the word go is Sulbha Arya and there should not be any surprises there - she is naughty, she is talkative, she's inquisitive and she's affectionate, a spledid combination!
The canvas of TBP is huge! There are different tracks running simultaneously and each one is central to the theme - it's a humungous task to keep the tracks going at a good pace and at the same time manage to keep the main story in perspective. The show has a very colourful palate...sometimes there is just too much colour. The title track is good...one of the better ones that I have seen in recent times....but quite frankly, after the title song of Remix...the production house has another hit on their hands. |