Writer : Rob Becker Direction : Heeba Shah Cast : Vishesh Arora
DEFENDING THE CAVEMAN Review
DEFENDING THE CAVEMAN by Rob Becker started out as a stand-up piece in the early 90s and was performed in the US as such. Becker then worked to turn it into a full-fledged play. It's the longest running solo play in Broadway history. In Mumbai, Heeba Shah has directed it, with Vishesh Arora playing the husband who "defends the caveman," battle-of-the-sexes style.
The play retains elements of the original piece: the main character who has stepped out from a house party that he and his wife have thrown, breaks the fourth wall and talks to the audience throughout the play, there is a generous use of props in the monologue and his life story is told through a collection of anecdotes. The narration starts with the husband as a teenager, when he realizes girls prefer sensitive men to 'macho' men. The anecdotes then move to his mid-twenties, when he meets his now wife in a club. Finally, the story shifts to his mid-thirties. He and his friends are now married and have started their own families.
Each anecdote is peppered with incidents of minor misunderstandings and arguments between the male and female characters of the story. The husband, who also has frequent visions from a wise caveman who he turns to for guidance when he is puzzled, then tells us how these arguments don't result from either of the genders being wrong or right but because of cognitive differences between men and women due to the way humans evolved from the time we lived in hunter-gatherer communities.
These differences through millions of years of evolution still affect our behavior in modern society. Men in these communities were hunters. They needed to single-mindedly focus on the kill, no distractions. Women on the other hand, were gatherers who worked together, looked around the forest to look for and collect food and other essentials for living. If these archetypes are extrapolated to a present-day situation, say a shopping trip, men, like their 'hunter' counterparts will think of what they want to buy and buy it. Women, on the contrary, will look all around for hours even, before they finally buy something, exactly like the women gathering fruits and firewood from eons ago.
Sources of arguments between men and women are explained to have resulted from a "difference of culture." This explanation seems oversimplified. Misunderstandings between the sexes are surely a result of a combination of social factors including class, religion and an agency over finances, among others. Moreover, one must consider whether these differences and the resulting behaviors are fair to both sexes and acknowledge the fact that society indeed needs to change to become more equitable.
However, the play has its heart in the right place: recognizing the fact that both genders need to show more empathy towards the other and accept a way of thinking different to one's own. Besides, it is a rollicking comedy. Arora's electrifying performance through two hours of continuous dialogue, while ensuring the jokes land and the physical comedy works, doesn't let the audience's attention dip even for a second.
Watch the play for two hours of loud laughs and some interesting food for thought.
*Neha Shende is an avid theatre-goer and enjoys watching old Bollywood movies in her free time.
