Dhruv Sachdeva’s latest production 7 Days to Wonderland is all about aerial stunts, shadow dance, fogged out appearances and underwater sequences. By I Kaur
To cloud an Indian’s eye with an emotional story is not a difficult task but to make an edgy woman from Paris weep needs talent. As they sat, there are only few things that could make a Parisian cry and Dhruv Sachdeva knew what. His forthcoming production 7 Days to Wonderland came to life from an “unexpected reaction. About a year and a half back I was following an artiste called Scott Mathews. I was listening to his song called Eyes Wider Than Before and it struck a chord with me. That time this one story came to my mind. There was some sort of resonance the song had with the story. So the next morning I went to Clifford Alphonso, creative manager of my company, Humour Me, and narrated the story to him. He was teary-eyed after that and went home and narrated the story to his girlfriend, who’s a Parisian. She started crying and wouldn’t stop. Parisians are supposed to be very uptight and not emotional, but this girl said that the story was fantastic and touched her completely. That is when I started writing the story and from there I knew it had to be a musical,” says the musician-theatre artiste.
Since Dhruv has multiple feathers in his cap and prefers to put his musical talent to good use, the entire show is a musical. He elaborates, “There are 12 music pieces and one soundtrack through the show and they are all written and composed by me. However, Gaurav Chintamani and Chayan Adhikari from Advaita did all the arrangements and drove the creative vision along with me.”
7 Days to Wonderland is deemed as the first original English musical in India. Dhruv explains, “In this country a musical either means adapting a show from Broadway or a concert with four singers standing in the basement, singing with a bunch on stage giving their inputs. So with this production we aim to bring to India its first original English musical. I wrote the script keeping my vision in mind and used the music as an inspiration to weave it all together.”
Though the title of the play instantly reminds one of lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, “it has nothing to do with it. The protagonist of the play is a 12-year-old girl who just happens to be called Alice. It is a completely contextual story. It’s a journey to wonderland over seven days. The show is based around time. It talks about how make-believe sometimes can become bigger than life. The father in the story still thinks like a child and lives in his make-believe world where he engages with imaginations. This story makes you look at the harsher things in life. You can either make the most tedious things in life a journey to wonderland or you can make wonderland so tedious by questioning everything that comes your way. It’s an audacity of opus,” he says.
He adds that the story revolves around music. “Every piece of music is actually sung by the actors. The actors playing the parts are also perfect for each role because when I was writing the script I had the cast in my mind. I’m playing one of the main characters. Plus all the dancers and actor-singers in the play are from an opera, Broadway or general acting background,” he informs.
According to Dhruv, in terms of a global quality benchmark, the music is at par. However, the other aspects are a little off Broadway techniques. “India is not quite there in terms of stage support, technology and equipment for musicals. For this show, we literally built another auditorium within this one to support the visual effect. We also built a ship which will come on the stage and have everything from aerial work, shadow dance, underwater sequences, snowy, fogged out appearances, evil, scary sequences to flying candles and revolving castles. While Broadway is fantastic in this context and has far more stage support and hydraulics, they are still beyond us. But in terms of music this is of global appeal. We have also recorded an album because it is of such high quality. This show could be called an Indian Matilda,” he shares.
After showcasing 7 Days in Wonderland at Siri Fort Auditorium today and tomorrow, Dhruv will take it to Singapore, Dubai and some European markets in order to test the waters. “If we manage to create a buzz in three-four years we will explore to take it to West End,” he adds.