Sumukhi Suresh: mistress of the awkward laughs

Sumukhi Suresh’s comedy is tough love. Relief theory states that horror and comedy are opposite sides of the same coin. Going by that logic, in the case of Suresh, when the coin is flipped, it balances itself upright.

An actor, director and stand-up comedian, her previous sketches for Behti Naak , a web series about a snotty-faced, sociopath schoolgirl with above-average intelligence, who keeps landing her parents in trouble, is not your average comedy skit.

Taking it further with Pushpavalli , she explores the comedy of errors that ensues when the protagonist, Pushpavalli (meaning creeper), changes cities to stalk a crush, leaving us with a tingle down the spine during many of its episodes.

Her third mini-series — produced for online streaming service Hotstar — has strains of her previous shows, but is in much lighter vein. Called Beauty and the Feast , it is part-cookery, part-madcap talk show, and is easy to get hooked to, especially if you follow the recent comedy scene.

Food brings friends together, but does it make for BFFs aka best friends forever? Suresh’s entire show revolves around this thought, as she invites fellow comics (sometimes in character, at other times playing themselves) to her studio-cum-kitchen, where she cooks for them and force-feeds them in a bid to turn them into her friends. To be fair, most of the guests on Suresh’s show are happy to be fed the gourmet meals she makes for them. The food looks enticing enough to be recreated after the show — sample a fig-and-prosciutto skewered with ham, fried aubergine with a yoghurt dressing, and the Kashmiri tabak maaz among other delicacies.

Food for love: In Beauty and the Feast, Sumukhi Suresh carries forward the lonely girl theme from her previous web series Pushpavalli

The force-feeding Beauty (played by Suresh) ties up her friends for the deed. Each episode has a different premise, and a different comedian coming in to be tied up and fed. And each of them has a different response. Varun Thakur does the split personality character — ‘Vicky this side’ — that he adopts routinely for his stand-ups: a gym-going loafer living in Versova and trying to make a career from acting. He is eager for all the food and, by the end of the show (spoiler alert), manages to convince his rich dad for ransom. Thakur is fed pork chops (Beauty very sweetly explains that it’s because Vicky is a pig). She glints, we smile and shiver.

Food for love: In Beauty and the Feast, Sumukhi Suresh carries forward the lonely girl theme from her previous web series Pushpavalli

‘It is statistically proven that dosti mein daraaren jhagde ki wajah se hoti hai, par agar dosti hi jhagde ki wajah se ho toh (fights may affect a friendship, but can a friendship begin with a fight)?” Suresh queries at the beginning of an episode before introducing the huffing-puffing Danish Sait (radio jockey and the conniving politician from the movie Humble Politician Nograj ), who comes in barking mad, but leaves satiated, if amused, with Beauty’s antics and philosophies in life.

For Valentine’s Day, Beauty produces a tied-up Mallika Dua and Kaneez Surka (from the YouTube channel AIB’s video Girl’s Best Friends ). The sketch that played out was an all-too-familiar one of two girls ganging up on the ever-friendly third wheel, who they use for benefits (her cooking skills, in this case). Except, this time, the ever-friendly third wheel has them tied up, and is brandishing knives (all in a friendly fashion, of course).

Food for love: In Beauty and the Feast, Sumukhi Suresh carries forward the lonely girl theme from her previous web series Pushpavalli

Most guests on her show declare how happy they are to have come, but are equally happy to get away from their hostage situation. All except Kalyan Rath and Kanan Gill, in the show’s bizarre yet entertaining finale. Catching them looking around in her fridge, she tells them, “The grocery store is around the corner.” But they reply that they’ve come to be kidnapped and fed, and Beauty suddenly feels comfortable with the whole situation. Kalyan Rath drops gems such as, “Food can be judged as good only if it still tastes good once it is cold. Otherwise, you’re eating temperature.”

Beauty doesn’t seem too impressed with any of the friends she collects over the show’s eight episodes. Through a flashback in the promo, the series shows that being taken advantage of by her friends is a childhood trait of Beauty. Produced as 15-20 minute episodes, the show cannot really be slotted into any defining category. It prominently features food, with recipes, but also has comedians answering crucial questions of the kind their fans might want to ask them, such as: ‘How did Biswa and Kanan meet?’ or ‘How did Danish Sait begin mimicking people (answer: childhood)’. In that sense, it becomes a talk show.

However, the host and the guests are often not playing themselves, so it is definitely fiction. Time and again, Suresh’s brand of comedy makes you laugh, while also unsettling you. She’s the eternal uncool kid, who underscores how humour is often a good coping mechanism — something that far too many stand-up comics have proven until now.

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