Vir Das' comedy amuses even those who didn't expect to be amused in the first place, discovers Utkarsh Mishra.
Vir Das' latest Netflix special, Fool Volume, begins with him greeting the audience in three cities, London, Mumbai and New York City.
It cuts between Das performing the same stand-up set in London and Mumbai, 48 hours apart, and then, 48 hours later, delivering another performance in NYC. This structure is used intelligently to anchor the special, ensuring that none of the cuts feel random and everything flows smoothly.
The story is woven around Das losing his voice six weeks before the performance and regaining it only 10 days prior to the recording.
And if you find the initial few minutes confusing, do not quit. Even if you don't find yourself smiling in the first five-eight minutes, hang in there. Your patience will be rewarded.
I say this as someone who wasn't very keen on watching it; someone who had -- and perhaps still has -- this perception of Das as an elite comedian. Especially after he won the Emmy, Das seems quite mindful of this perception and, therefore, addresses it in the show.
It helps allay your apprehension about him being pretentious.
You realise that while he may seem better suited for a certain kind of audience, his comedy is intelligent enough to transcend those barriers and amuse even those who didn't expect to be amused in the first place.
The setups and jokes that seem mundane in the beginning offer riveting twists toward the end.
And amidst these jokes that elicit laughter, he drops some brilliant insights on what happiness is, what freedom is, what life is -- insights that leave you in awe, merely because of the way they are expressed.
Since the show was recorded a few months earlier, some punchlines, in today's context, seem to have 'aged really well'.
Of course, the limits and consequences of intelligent comedy in New India are discussed, which again, is not just funny, but profound.
You are treated to the tale of an artist's nervous breakdown right after reaching the pinnacle of his career, to the power of human emotions, and to the inhibitions of our mind that consciously and unconsciously limit our expressions.
Fool Volume is all about Das finding his volume after a long period of silence -- not just literally, but figuratively.
As he explains: 'When you are not constantly thinking about whether you can speak, you can speak.'
It ventures into the realm of whether anything but our own thoughts truly tame our free will.
Obviously, one must be ready to face the consequences, as Das and other comedians do. And since they are able to laugh away the seriousness of those consequences, they could be called fools.
But if, fearing the consequences, the fool in us gives way to the prudent, we lose our voice -- the voice that even the mighty fear, and therefore always strive to silence.
The only way to deal with them is for more and more fools to find their volume.
PS: That volume briefly turns cacophonous when Das plays around with a popular cuss word (after invoking the legendary Freddie Mercury, no less). Although a minor aberration, it still warrants a half-star deduction in the final rating.
Vir Das: Fool Volume streams on Netflix.
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