Clone Banega Crorepati: A quirky cloning premise turns hilariously wrong

'Clone Banega Crorepati' staged at Alliance Française, Chennai. | Photo Credit: B. Velankanni Raj Theatre Marina’s Clone Banega Crorepati (written by Vedarun Rajkumar; directed by R. Giridharan) is, as the title suggests, a play about cloning. But it isn’t a serious play on the ethics of cloning. It is a one-and-a-half-hour laugh riot on cloning gone wrong.Shanmugam (Girish Kumar) is developing a bio-programmable clone. His wife, Bhagavathi (Sukanya), wonders if he even remembers that he is married, because he hasn’t given her even a hug in ages. Shanmugam’s friend Palam Parthiban, or PP for short (Arun Venugopal), comes up with a plan to help Shanmugam make money. Director R. Giridharan handles the onstage chaos deftly, ensuring that the mounting madness remains coherent as well as relentlessly funny. | Photo Credit: B. Velankanni Raj Fernandez (Raghavan) is the son of a don in Mumbai, born into a family that has been in the business for generations. Unfortunately, despite diligently studying previous years’ question papers, Fernandez has failed the final exam for dons, , because he couldn’t hear the questions in the viva.Fernandez lost his hearing in his right ear when a policeman, who was aiming for his chest, knocked off his ear instead. Fernandez is desperate to pass the exam for dons and win his father’s praise. PP brings Fernandez to Shanmugam, with a request: to create Fernandez’s clone, with both ears intact, so that the clone can take the exam instead of Fernandez.Meanwhile, Bhagavathi is unable to handle her brother, who, after recovery from a coma, has regressed into childhood. She asks Shanmugam to clone himself so that the clone can help her at home, while he continues to work in the lab. The cloning experiments involving Fernandez and Shanmugam go awry, leading to a series of hilarious results. A scene from the Tamil play clone Banega Crorepati. | Photo Credit: B. Velankanni Raj The clones have the bodies of 30-year-olds but the brain and attention span of children. a child. The comic script is benefited from the stellar performance of the entire cast.Director R. Giridharan handles the onstage chaos deftly, ensuring that the mounting madness remains coherent as well was relentlessly funny. Arun Venugopal as Palam Parthiban was masterly. Not only did his punchlines land with precision, but his physicality provided a lot of visual humour.Finally, Shanmugam realises that science may be able to replicate physical traits in a clone, but it cannot recreate the emotional core that makes us human. Published - August 03, 2026 04:35 pm IST