Tanaaz Currim and Vinay Jain in Two to Tango. Picture by Rashbehari Das

A sumptuous supper could make you feel too sleepy for some heavy-duty theatre, but not a light sip and bite. Cocktail theatre is a more chilled-out experience ? one, where you can enjoy your champagne and the stage act too.

Last Wednesday, the Park Hotel uncorked the first-of-its-kind evening of cocktail theatre in town, with a spread of candle-lit round tables, fine wine and some Frank Sinatra.

As the four-member cast took the makeshift stage at one end of the banquet for Raell Padamsee?s Two to Tango, the select clientele of 400, comprising celebrities, consular officials, corporate honchos and bureaucrats, laughed out loud at every twist and turn in the play.

Introducing this novel concept is an exercise by the Park Street hotel to push up its popularity score in the entertainment sector.

The hour-long Two to Tango comprised four single acts revolving around man-woman relationships at various stages of life.

Dilnaz Irani and Digvijay Savant kicked it off as two college-goers, complete strangers, reacting differently to the same situations. The third had Dilnaz and Digvijay turning into an elderly couple who have almost stopped communicating with each other. Tanaaz Currim and Vinay Jain took the stage for the second and last acts, revealing some discordant notes in marriage and in a relationship out of wedlock.

?We let the guests chill with cocktails and then present them a nice, short and crisp play. It should not be heavy-duty at all,? says Tanaaz, the most accomplished of the four actors.

The genre that marries theatre with merriment originated in Mumbai and is fast gaining popularity in Delhi and Bangalore.

?Apart from hotels and restaurants, we have also performed cocktail theatre at lounge bars in Mumbai and it has gone down very well with the audience. It provides a much more relaxed ambience,? says Padamsee, the Mumbai-based theatre veteran who began experimenting with the concept a couple of years ago.

The productions are usually small in scale, allowing only a few actors at a time on stage with minimal props. The crew plays around with whatever furniture is available at the venues.

?But it?s a challenge because each space is different and the crowd is different too,? adds Padamsee, who has taken two of her popular plays, Laughing Wild and Let?s Talk Honey, to cocktail parties. She is now planning to stage Anything But Love, starring Mandira Bedi, at such a setting.

?The prerequisite of cocktail theatre is a crisp and entertaining production. It need not necessarily be a comedy. You can do murder mysteries too, but the bottom line is to let the audience have a good evening. So without sounding snobbish I want to say that you don?t need to intellectualise in such a performance,? explains Padamsee.

If the reactions from the Tanmoy Boses and Renu Roys were anything to go by ? ?what an enjoyable evening!? ? Calcutta won?t take much to warm to cocktail theatre.