Page 85 - Forbes - India (January 2020)

about Miss Marple being injured and no one’s same time wants to embrace it. We talked about
coming to see her and she’s feeling a bit lost how to re-contextualise that here. So, Ayeesha,
and lonely. This is about ageing and forgetting who’s Goan, has set it in Goa in the mid-1970s. The
and what we remember. We play on the idea encroachment is the hippies on the beach and the
of memory being malleable and fluid. drugs and the instability that they generate, and
Miss Mistry is trying to cope with the change.
Q What was the need to reimagine
this for an Indian audience? Q When you talk about characters with
It seemed an anathema to me if I came to India bigoted views, did you have the recent
and ask Indian actors to be set in a little English Indian political context in mind?
village. It’s fine if an Indian director did that, but We’re not being on the nose about it, but the same
it just didn’t make any sense for me. I wanted to is happening in the UK, and all over the world. You
work with Indian actors on a story that made sense can’t help but make those connections. Someone
to me about who they are and what their cultural in the play says, ‘Oh, but she’s a Muslim’. To which
heritage is. If we didn’t reimagine the story, how Miss Mistry says, ‘And what’s that got to do with
would the Indian characters speak? With an English
accent? That seems weirdly colonial and awful.

Q you’ve directed the play before with a
British cast. When you chose to do an Indian
adaptation, what were you looking for?
When I came here in May to hold auditions,
I met a lot of actors whom I asked, ‘What
would this character be like if they were
Indian?’ In the end, it was more about how
the actor portrayed the character. 85
Once the casting emerged, Ayeesha Menon, the
writer who re-contextualised the play for an Indian
audience, started to shape the story around them.
This was an unusual set of circumstances where
the casting happened first and then the story.

Q What sort of adaptation can the
audience expect from this production?
We don’t have the moralising Marple; we take anything?’ At the same time, she’s a bigot in some
the characters that are stereotyped and we The casting ways too and she’s having to come to terms with it.
for The
subvert the idea. All the characters are bigoted Mirror
and they stereotype others—like ‘Oh, she’s a Crack’d... Q With the explosion of ott platforms, do you
happened
Punjabi’, or ‘Oh, she’s a Muslim’, and then that first and see the audience for live theatre waning?
unravels. In a way, we’re using the Christie trope then the Strangely, no. People have the hunger for live
story was
of stereotypes and then picking away at it and reimagined interaction. It’s something about the live experience
illuminating it so that they all start to become that’s unsurpassable. We can enjoy the comfort
aware of their snobberies. The latter, though, of our homes and bed and Netflix, but, in the end,
doesn’t happen in an Agatha Christie novel. it’s lonely. There’s nothing more exhilarating than
In the British context, Christie sets this story watching live performances. It’s a social interaction
in seismic times, both socially and politically. This and you can’t measure that visceral experience.
complacent, sleepy little village in the middle On the other hand, I’ve directed a piece for
of England on one hand is being invaded by the National Theatre [in London], an adaptation
working class people from London. On the other of My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. It
side is Hollywood in the form of the glamorous has four parts, each lasting for one hour or
actor Marina Gregg, who’s come to live there. It more and you can see it all in one day. It’s like
represents the encroaching commodification of binge-theatre and shows we are beginning
America on one side and class mobility on the to borrow from the Netflix experiences and
other. Marple is slightly anxious about it but at the bringing them into the theatrical form.

january 31, 2020 • forbes india