2034 is a play that anticipates the future through the veneer of a magic show that is suddenly drawn into the jaws of a strange reality – a reality unknown to the audience which – when it saw the events unfold on stage initially, had no inkling about the world that the magicians and the other characters actually occupied.

It is inspired by a play of yore – written by Badal Sarkar – the theatre magician who gave India ‘Evam Indrajit’ – possibly the first play which introduced Indian theatre to the western genres of absurdist and minimalist theatre.

2034 contains Sarkar’s signature effects – a theatre in direct contact with the audience with the magician Moinak interacting with some of them at the beginning as part of his magic show – but it is not third theatre, for the rest of the play unfolds on stage, and at the end, transports the audience into a reality they might not have anticipated amidst the ambience of breezy light humour which envelopes the play almost throughout its duration.

Moinak and Niharika are a famous magician couple whose ‘MN Magic’ is renowned around the world, specifically for a fantastic thought-reading act which Niharika performs live on stage. The play starts with this act in the form of a direct interaction with the audience, and then proceeds with the happenings after the end of the magic show – where the magicians and their teenage son analyse the day’s performance. In comes the manager of the auditorium – a jovial man – who, after a bout of banter with the magicians, announces that Mr. Mallik would like to meet them.

The couple scoff at the possibility of a meeting after a long and tiring day, but are told that this is the one and only Narottam Mallik – a man famous throughout the land by his influence on how it is run – so that the couple really have no choice about the meeting. Moinak and Niharika are then subjected to a discourse with Mr. Mallik who is eager to judge Niharika’s abilities in his own terms, since he thinks that these abilities would be useful to him.

Thus commences Niharika’s test. Would she – with Moinak’s help – be able to read the iron mind of Mr. Mallik? The play twists and turns unpredictably, and finally reaches its unique conclusion – quite unfathomable from the perspective with which it began.

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