Walking into the Peshwa Hall, one was greeted not just by champagne and canapes but also by Fifi La Fan, who immediately proceeded to tell you how exciting it is that Henri Le Grosse, with whom she has a little understanding (wink, wink), is painting again after 10 years. Even as you wonder about this uninvited nugget of information, you are joined by Fenella Mountjoy, who wants to know just what that ``tramp,'' who was here earlier, was up to. You realise then that not only has the interactive play began, but that you are already part of it.

As soon as you take your seat, the action revs up, with the audience being introduced to the seven-member cast. The play spans an evening. It's time for an auction of a self-portrait by the renegade artist, Le Grosse, who decided to paint after a self-imposed exile. To be held at the home of Davinia Darcy, an socialite more prone to collecting art than understanding it, the other guests include her disinherited sister Fenella, a one-time Le Grosse paramour and thus a possessor of his best works, husband and manager of her vast fortune, Norman Darcy, and her brother, Giles Mountjoy, an artist only in his eyes. Then you are introduced to art connoisseur and intellectual snob Charles Clifford and La Fan, model and Henri's companion.

Soup is served and so is the plot - made up of various complex relationships between these members. As you dig into the main course, a couple of scenes are enacted in the passage in the centre, even as the cast moves around, stopping at every table to answer just about any query the guests may put to them.

Without realising, you establish a link with the characters and are drawn into their lives. You jest with La Fan, agree with Fenella when she frets over the value of her paintings now that Le Grosse is painting again, almost pat Mountjoy on his head in sympathy after Le Grosse snubs his works. By the time dessert arrives, three characters are dead, leaving behind the question - whodunit?

While the plot is tortuous and complex (with just Ankush Malhotra guessing the murderers' identities right, bagging two return tickets to Hong Kong), what really carried the play, peppered with witty one-liners, was its novel presentation and the audience participation. Not to mention the talented cast of the British arts group, Masquerade. The play was brought to Pune by Entre Nous.