Director Bharat Dabholkar’s Blame it on Yashraj and its star-studded cast will soon bring the humorous story about love, marriage and family to life for Dilliwallahs. By Rupinder Kaur
let’s face it, weddings are no easy affairs. Those involved will feel the pressure to focus all their energies (also moolah) on the event to make it grand and memorable. Then Bollywood films, too, have set standards to match up to with their exotic wedding destinations, designer wear, elaborate choreography which your aunt might still be struggling with for the sangeet function. Delhi would soon witness another glitzy affair with AGP World’s production Blame in on Yashraj by writer and director Bharat Dabholkar which will be staged at Kamani Auditorium on September 12.
“The communities here are no longer sticking to the traditional wedding rituals. Maharashtrians would have a one day wedding while the Malayalis would be done with it in five minutes. The Bollywood influence has taken over and brides and the grooms want to go fancy just like the films would show. A one-day event now gets stretched to at least four-five days with numerous functions. There will be professional choreographers to hone your dance skills. They are getting bigger and bigger and the other day I was shocked to hear that there are honeymoon photography sessions as well, for the outdoor activities of course,” quips Dabholkar.
The comedy musical, running for the last four years, is about a girl from a Hindu family wanting to marry a Muslim boy and the ensuing drama. “With the songs and dance, we also want the audience to participate since everyone is itching to shake a leg. Both elements add to the play as we needed to give it a Bollywood angle. We did a show at the Rich Carlton Hotel in Singapore and it felt like an actual wedding. The venue had been decorated and rose water was being sprinkled on the audience who came dressed in wedding outfits,” shares the director who has also created the longest-running English musical play in India called Bottoms Up.
The play’s star cast includes actor and director Anant Mahadevan, who recently made the award-winning biopic Gour Hari Dastaan, TV actress Jayati Bhatia, Punit Tejwani, Aanchal Sabharwal, et al. While talking about working on the characters, Dabolkhar shares, “A lot of work goes behind creating the characters. The brides father, for example, played by Anant is not supposed to be flamboyant so he had to fit in. The bride has returned from the US and is a Punjabi so she had to have a certain look”.
Getting the cast together was one of the challenges for him since the actors were also involved in other TV and film projects but Dabholkar feels that theatre is more “exciting and adventurous”. “Doing any play is difficult and most of the actors are not theatre-oriented. But the satisfaction one gets from a theatre production is far better. Here the actors would get a live response from the audience, they will see how they react. I remember Akshay Kumar had come to watch one of the shows and afterwards the only the question he kept repeating was ‘How do you guys remember the lines’,” he laughs.
The other challenge, according to Dabholkar, is that doing a comedy play can be more complicated at times as compared to the ones with serious tones. “When we travel internationally to perform, we need to tweak the script and add in more local references since we are not only performing for the Indians based there but the locals as well. They need to relate it. Especially when the weddings take place, you’ll sit and create a list of who you want to invite and who to avoid. The play is like a mirror to your life and reminds one of what happens back home. It is a joke on life”.
The director claims that youth these days, mostly opt for stand-up comedies and there are less takers for plays based on serious issues. “There is a Marathi play called Purush, which also brought actor Nana Patekar into the limelight, and I decided to do it in English. The story is about a schoolteacher who is raped by a politician. I assembled a cast of best actors around but couldn’t even manage to do ten shows. People would tell me ‘There is enough about rapes and murders all over. We need to laugh and go home. Call us when you do Bottoms Up’,”he tells us while adding that the scenario will be the same in the years to come.