The script, based on Ingvar Ambjørnsen’s 1996 novel, is brought to stage by Dramanon, a group that’s made a forte of productions with highly individualistic characters and a quirky sense of humor. Elling sparkles with wit and very affectionately details its eccentric leads. The pace is laid-back but there isn’t a dull moment – you wait expectantly to know what the characters will say or do next.

The bond between the apparently mismatched people Elling and Kjell Bjarne is very endearing, more so when their other relationships threaten to bring a strain between them. Elling is the more insecure of the two, and it’s both amusing and touching to witness his reactions when he finds Kjell Bjarne drawn towards the lady upstairs or getting friendly with his pal Alfons Jørgensen.

Anshu Bora has an extremely expressive face and mannerisms and brought some very nice touches to Kjell Bjarne’s blustering innocence, with the shuffling walk and the guttural laugh. He looked the part so well that I wondered if he had actually remained unwashed for days for authenticity’s sake. Wish I could say the same about Nakul Bhalla’s makeup for the part of Alfons – he acted old all right but was clearly a young man in white-haired disguise that wouldn’t take in Dr. Watson.

Deepanjan Dey did admirably as Elling. He had the largest stage time and the most varied scenes to perform, including a couple of difficult soliloquies which he pulled off with fine assurance. His fear of strangers and of plastic equipment is so palpable that you almost feel like saying ‘there, there’ and putting him back into the security of his cupboard.

A play about people out of the ordinary has it tough – the audience has to be convinced of the characters’ motivations and actions to invest emotionally in them. For Elling, being expected to pick up a ringing phone is like being asked to jump into the fire. As the onlooker, you are amused yet a part of you empathizes with his dread and rejoices when he gradually gets over it, just as it revels in his happiness at the prospect of "going to a cabin" and in forming friendships without the help of the Norwegian government.

When a play makes you feel fear and pain and joy in things that seem laughably mundane in real life, then the play has truly succeeded.

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The only disappointment in the show was its venue. The seats at Alliance Francaise’s auditorium do not allow everyone to get a fair view of the stage, especially if a tall person occupies the seat right in front of you. Whenever the actors sat down on the floor, out they went from my view. One also has to tilt one’s head up as the seats are at a lower level than the stage, and sometimes the bad-looking ceiling will catch the gaze which is very distracting. This was my first experience of watching a play at Alliance Francaise and I will not wish to go there again if I can help it. Good old Ranga Shankara is the best!

Three 30-something characters – Theo (musician trained classically, he takes pains to tell us), Babette (author prone to borrowing money) and Frank (training to be auctioneer by reciting tongue-twisters) – share the floor of an apartment. These are the people we see; others exist in the framework but don’t make a stage appearance. There is a squabbling couple visible only through a silhouette in the window, a mysterious ‘Mrs. Jorgenson’ who is much talked about but never seen ‘live’, and Larry of course, the friend who affects the lives of all three.

These are grey characters with flaws obvious to the audience, if not to the characters themselves. Theo has no talent for composing, Frank doesn’t seem cut out for auctioneering and Babette’s book about "20th century outbursts" is clearly doomed. They are drawn together more out of locational proximity than because they trust or care about each other.

The play is driven by conversations and (often disjoint) vignettes, entertaining by themselves without anything very eventful binding them together. A couple of dramatic events do happen, which in another kind of play might have been the focal points of the story. Not here – in fact you are taken aback at the lightness with which they’re treated.

But there’s plenty to savour in the details. One of the play’s best sequences is the conversation between Frank and Theo at Theo’s apartment, when Frank plays effortless ditties on Theo’s keyboard and is cruelly crushed in response.

The script is sharp, intelligent and playful with words. It’s tagged as a comedy, which we’ve come to associate with gags and laugh-out-loud witticisms nowadays. This isn’t that kind of humor – it is pretty low-key, the quiet chuckle kind. Frank’s voice tape belts out philosophical one-liners pertinent to the situation on hand. There are random funny musings such as the one about the "alliterative purpose" of the Betty Butter tongue-twister, or the telling comment about landlords: ‘…when you share a landlord with people you have of course a built-in common enemy, and there’s just about nothing more bond-inducing than sharply focused ill-will.’

The dialogue delivery was somewhat slow and I think a faster pace would have worked better. The pauses may have been a deliberate decision, to let the clever turns of phrase get across to the audience or to channel an American style of speaking.  A downside of this was that we could sometimes see the punch-line before it came.

The actors had evidently rehearsed thoroughly, right down to the number of raps when knocking on each others’ doors. In a 90-min play rich with conversation, it is to their credit that they sailed through it without fumbling anywhere. I did feel though that the acting wasn’t all that it could have been. Theo (Deepanjan Dey)’s diction might have been better. Frank (Nakul Bhalla, who has a very expressive face) could do with some more vigour in scenes where aggression was needed. Babette (Sharanya Ramprakash?) did the raised-eyebrows-open-mouth routine well which perhaps was in-character, but it was too one-dimensional.

There was a tiny problem with the lighting. The actors behind the screen were supposed to be seen in silhouette, but from where I sat I could see the guy behind clearly.

I didn’t absolutely love [sic] when it started but it grew on me slowly. The play has a certain whimsical allure, that’ll leave you charmed if not heartily amused.

Why the name [sic]?

Melissa James Gibson, the playwright, explains the title of her play in the "playwright’s note on performance":

Sic, of course, is a Latin term that appears in writing, as a signal to the reader that an apparent mistake is in fact an accurate citation. This notion of distancing one-self from responsibility informs the three main characters of the play, who exist at arm’s length from their own situations, as if their real lives were yet to be inhabited.

Incidentally, the American enactment of this play was awarded the 2001-02 Obie award, the annual award for off-Broadway productions.