Scenes from Playhouse’s debut production, Boomerang, staged back-to-back over three evenings at Gyan Manch. Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya

They say that their play is “not a diktat”, but about “sights and sounds — familiar and unfamiliar”. This may be why Boomerang, a play by student theatre group Playhouse — presented at Gyan Manch this week in association with The Telegraph In Schools and Airtel — touches a chord somewhere. Directed by Anubrata Basu — all of 18 and a first-year student of mass communication and videography at St Xavier’s College — and with a cast of 30 students singing, dancing and doing a lot of things other than conventional acting, Boomerang could have been chaos. But it isn’t. It veers, instead, towards art.

Boomerang begins with apparently unconnected vignettes: A neurotic manners and ethics teacher (played by Yash Saraf, a Class IX student of La Martiniere School For Boys); a school peon (played by Playhouse co-founder Safdar Rahman; also a Class XII student in St Xavier’s Collegiate School) with wasted potential and a dark past, who understands too well how what it means to be of a “different” caste and class (“Why wouldn’t the ant marry the elephant’, he asks? “Because the elephant isn’t the same caste as the ant”, comes his answer in a soliloquy); someone watching a K-serial where each dialogue is repeated thrice and an engagement broken because the groom-to-be happens to be Muslim; a girl who is bombarded with billboard messages that peddle everything from “fair is lovely” to “thin is in”.

The script finally settles on this schoolgirl, Ayushi (played by Manavi Gupta, a Class XI student of Modern High School for Girls) who does not fit in with her peer group. Neither does the peon, Mianji. The two misfits are drawn to each other and the story unfolds.

Along with the intelligent use of light and costumes, visually repeated motifs work well to build emotion; resulting in scenes that are often brilliantly etched. Like the playground that repeats throughout the play like a dramatic refrain. Or, the traffic scene, where the feel of a busy street is likened to the madness in urban minds.

The use of people as props — especially with the children assembling to form not just the bicycle rider but the moving parts of a bicycle — is novel and entertaining. Others, like the classroom scene where the bright red costumes are further underlined by red lighting are a tad over-the-top.

The move that stands out and provides a break from the mood of angst that dominates the play is one where Mianji and Ayushi hold hands and walk around the stage. With an artfully-made window to one’s soul, a lone moon and bare tree, with a mellow tune playing in the background, this scene leaves a lasting impression.

The performances are exceptional. Safdar is very convincing in his role as the peon, from his diction to his body language. As is Yash, who plays the ethics teacher. His dialogue delivery, with carefully nuanced nervous tics and stammering, chill you to the bone. The live music (by Tajdar Junaid and Dwaipayan Saha) that also keeps coming back in a loop, is often eerie, often tense.

While Boomerang ends perhaps a little predictably, albeit in a poignant manner, with Nancy Sinatra’s version of the Cher classic Bang Bang — the end an influence of Gus Van Sant’s Elephant, perhaps? — that doesn’t detract from this production’s effect. Like a literal boomerang, what goes around has a way of coming around. “What you sow is what you reap. Boomerang boomerang,” says Yash.

May these new artistes, too, return to the stage.

What did you feel about Boomerang? Tell t2@abpmail.com)