A clumsy oaf with miles of string. A fruit obsessed army sergeant. A parrot nailed to his perch. An advertising rookie waiting for a life changing idea. King Arthur on a make-believe horse riding through Chowdiah Memorial Hall. This weekend, Chennai-based theatre group Evam’s latest compilation of Monty Python sketches, ‘And Now for Something Completely Different!’, offered Bangalore incidental comedy and intentional hysteria created by three gifted actors who share a seamless and yet complex chemistry.

Complementing Karthik Kumar’s high voltage star appeal is Sunill Vishnu K’s chameleon-like ability to become a crafty parrot seller or a Hollywood director polishing his knuckles in anticipation of a compliment. Then there is Karthik Srinivasan who can generate laughter with just a toss of his orange wig and the twitch of an eyebrow.
We caught up with the actors to find out what makes them such a formidable team.   

Comedy is all about an exchange of energy. How hard do you work on fine tuning your chemistry with each other or is it a very improvisational process?

Karthik Kumar: Experience and trust have taught us to understand each other's spaces as actors. At the end of the day we are all winning the same war — that of tuning into the audience's wavelength!

Sunill Vishnu K: Chemistry is about understanding each other as actors and people and feeding off each other's energies. The fact that we know each other is the key to this chemistry!

Karthik Srinivasan: From the first play we did together, I have admired Karthik and Sunill as actors and people. The rest…as they say.. is chemistry!

As three very different type of actors, you share the same comic space very easily. How would you define each other as actors?

KK: Karthik Srinivasan is THE audience's man. I would be the anchor  and Sunill would be the bridge! 

SV: We understand each other as actors and our performance is about both chemistry and trust. And even if one of us tries to do one-upmanship, he will be outnumbered!

KS: Karthik Kumar is the 'woo' factor. Sunill is the ‘wow’ factor and  I am the ‘connect’ factor. We are one entity presenting itself in three aspects and we know exactly where one stops and the other starts.

How do you make a Python sketch uniquely yours...does it happen on the idea board or during performance?

KK: When we do Python, it’s OURS. When Sunill and I did it first in 1999, we didn’t know what a Monty Python was! It was just scripts we had access to. And different sketches have different flavours and the final show has to be a winning buffet of them all. Six courses of biryani cannot a meal make ... so goes an ancient Nawabi saying!

KS: When any actor has fun on stage, the audiences will automatically join the party.

SV: The Pythons created their madness with their own agenda in the ’60s on TV. When Karthik and I got our hands on a few of these scripts in 1999, we adapted it to stage with our own agenda. From then on, it became fun for us and more so for our audience and today this ranks as the most performed show of Evam and is the ‘glucose drip’ for any new audience who wants to check out theatre. Choosing the script is Karthik’s and my prerogative but the actors do get a veto power.

How do two directors contribute to one project?

KK: By ideating, fighting, arguing, tearing each other's brains out until we are in sync! And when we are in sync, we are on song!

SV: The show is bigger than any of us and Evam is bigger than both of us and the audience is the biggest amongst all. So after a bit of Kung Fu, boxing and wrestling, we finally agree to play together as a team for the team!