Disconnect at Theatre Local

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There is much to admire in Anupama Chandrasekhar’s gripping account of that phenomenon of our hi-tech times, the Indian call centre. 4 stars The Telegraph, Charles Spencer, 23.02.10

The Royal Court has a long and honourable tradition of plays about work, ranging from Storey’s The Contractor and Wesker’s The Kitchen to the recent Jerusalem, which depicts, among much else, the vicissitudes of a rural drug dealer.

Now comes Anupama Chandrasekhar’s Disconnect, a gripping account of that phenomenon of our hi-tech times, the Indian call centre.

When my computer at home goes down, I phone a number to discover that I am speaking to someone in Mumbai. If I didn’t pay my credit-card bills, Chandrasekhar suggests, I might well be bombarded with calls from Chennai (formerly Madras) where she lives and has researched this play in satisfying detail.

It is set in a call centre where the staff pursue American credit-card defaulters. Some of them actually pretend to be American rather than Indian, adopting US accents and a detailed back-story, claiming to know Chicago intimately as they deal with the debtors of Illinois.

Like David Mamet in Glengarry Glen Ross, Chandrasekhar captures the banter and the feuds of a high-pressure workplace, where targets are everything and the milk of human kindness is in short supply.

There is great technical bravura to the writing, too, with three telephone conversations often taking place simultaneously as the Indians hustle the Americans as well as break off to utter asides to their colleagues.

There is much more to admire than to criticise, not least the sparky dialogue and cracking performances. In an astonishing debut, Nikesh Patel strikes me as a star in the making as the reckless, charismatic Ross (Roshan), the most cunning of the debt collectors until he falls in love with one of his debtors over the phone and jeopardises the entire operation. He superbly suggests a young man for whom the American Dream has become a dangerous delusion.

Hasina Haque is touching as the girlfriend he betrays, and there is a deeply moving performance from the ever-excellent Paul Bhattacharjee as the decent, worn-out office supervisor struggling to cope in modern India.

At once exciting and poignant, Disconnect keeps its audiences hooked throughout.

Disconnect, Royal Court Theatre Upstairs 4 stars The Times, Benedict Nightingale, 24.02.10

A young woman who variously calls herself Sharon, Jennifer, Michelle and Jyothi is demoting a middle-aged man with a marked Indian accent whose only name is Avinash. He hasnt been getting results in New York so hell be moved to Illinois. “Where is Illinois?”, the man asks. “On the fourth floor” : which is Anupama Chandrasekhar’s witty way of revealing that her play isn’t set in the United States at all but in a call centre in Madras, from which fake Americans pester real Americans to repay the debts they owe a credit card company.

“Its wonderful to welcome you as part of the happy True Blue family” is the company’s come-on, and “have a great day” at the end of every conversation, including those that simultaneously butter up, bully, tantalise and menace people who have spent money they didnt have on cars or expensive television sets at interest rates that rise inexorably by the day. These are conducted under the eye of Paul Bhattacharjee’s insecure, unfeeling Avinash by three young people who, since its daytime in the US, work all night with barely a break: prime among them are Ayesha Dharker’s Vidya, aka Vicki, whose ferocity causes a suicide, and Nikesh Patel’s Roshan, aka Ross, who pretends to be a blond boy from Buffalo and seems the most laid-back and ablest of all.

But its Ross who is the troubled centre of a play that has sharp things to say about subjects varying from Indian racism (Vidya desperately wanting to be white) to American consumerism (reckless spenders reduced by recession to tearful misery). What others see as the upstairs dungeon, an airless chatroom looking out on slumland and rubbish dumps, he increasingly imagines to be Chicago itself, the city of opportunity in which he yearns to live. Thats partly why he becomes chummy with a feckless American girl, unilaterally cancelling her debts in the hope that she’ll help him when he migrates and, as a result, getting into hot water on two continents.

The play never interested me much in the shifting bonds between long-distance loan sharks who are clearly victims themselves, but it’s intelligent, punchy and pointed. The moral: next time you suspect a call-centre pest is on the line, sympathise but ring off.