Theater Marina clone will become a millionaire (written by Vedarun Rajkumar; directed by R. Giridharan), as the title suggests, is a drama about cloning. But this is not a serious mess with the ethics of cloning. It’s an hour and a half of hilarity about cloning gone wrong.

Shanmugam (Girish Kumar) is developing a bio-programmable clone. His wife, Bhagwati (Sukanya), wonders if he even remembers that he is married, as he has not even hugged her in many years. Shanmugam’s friend Palam Parthiban, or PP for short (Arun Venugopal), comes up with a plan to help Shanmugam earn money.

Director R. Giridharan deftly handles the chaos on stage, ensuring that the spiraling madness remains coherent as well as consistently funny. | Photo Courtesy: B Velankanni Raj

Fernandez (Raghavan) is the son of a Mumbai don, born into a family that has been in the business for generations. Unfortunately, despite studying the previous years’ papers diligently, Fernandez failed the DONS final exam because he could not hear the questions in the oral exam.

Fernandez lost the hearing in his right ear when a policeman, who was aiming at his chest, hit his ear. Fernandez is desperate to pass the exams for the Dons and win his father’s praise. PP brings Fernandez to Shanmugam with a request: to create a clone of Fernandez, keeping both ears intact, so that the clone can take the exam in Fernandez’s place.

Meanwhile, Bhagwati is unable to handle her brother, who has reverted to childhood after recovering from the coma. She asks Shanmugam to clone herself so that the clone can help her at home, while she continues to work in the lab. The cloning experiments involving Fernandez and Shanmugam fail, leading to several ridiculous results.

A scene from the Tamil drama CWill become a millionaire alone.
| Photo Courtesy: B Velankanni Raj

The clones have the bodies of 30-year-olds but the brain and attention span of a child. The comic script benefits from stellar performances from the entire cast.

Director R. Giridharan deftly handles the chaos on stage, ensuring that the growing madness remains coherent and at the same time consistently funny. Arun Venugopal was adept as Palam Parthiban. Not only did his punchlines land with precision, but his physicality provided much of the visual humor.

Ultimately, Shanmugam realized that science might be able to replicate physical traits in clones, but it could not recreate the emotional core that makes us human.