‘Born to be wild...’, theme song of the 1969 cult film Easy Rider, plays in the background of Anand Express, a play by Rage Productions, directed by Nadir Khan for Aditya Birla’s theatre initiative, Aadyam .
But instead of a heavy-metal motorbike, the protagonists of this play hit the highway on a modest Vespa, after madcap rides in ordinary, passenger trains. There is no cocaine or alcohol. Anand Express is a simple, sad-sweet story of three friends stealing their dead friend’s ashes from his insensitive family to disperse them in Anand, the centre of a dairy revolution in India, to make his dream come true. The dead friend, Anand, wanted to visit Anand, just so he could say, “Anand in Anand”.
What unfolds through this picaresque tale of Wasim, Neeraj and Kenny’s journey to Anand, is the hidden angst of their seemingly happy-go-lucky lives. Wasim, from a less privileged background than Anand, envious of his social standing, has stood by and watched Anand being beaten up by bullies, and, maybe got pleasure out of it. Neeraj has befriended Anand’s girlfriend Tanya, and is perhaps the cause of their breakup. Kenny has not responded to Anand’s cry for help in restoring his father’s novel which he has, inadvertently, deleted from the computer. So is it guilt or love that makes them undertake this journey? Perhaps, both.
But the play is not dark or gloomy. Rather, it takes a light-hearted look at that tricky age between childhood and adult life, spoofing characters and situations in a way that the young audience at St Andrews auditorium, in Mumbai, where the play opened, seemed to identify with totally. Anand and his friends are quintessentially fun-loving, Bandra boys and even a lady in her 40s was heard commenting, “The play took me back to my college days in Bandra.”
That the play is an adaptation by Akarsh Khurana of a Carl Miller play, based on the book, Ostrich Boys, by Keith Gray, comes as a surprise. Rahul DaCunha, of Rage Productions, believes, “Akarsh has done a very good adaptation. The uniqueness of the play’s language, the fact that the characters are all from Bandra and are an amalgam of people we know, makes the play very accessible. Rage feels strongly about getting millennials into the theatre.”
Director Nadir Khan adds, “Akarsh has a very firm grasp on what does and does not work in an Indian context. And his perspective is always a very interesting one. With Anand Express, Akarsh allowed the original text to retain its core identity while contextualizing his work in such a way that it seems like a homegrown text with the characters being completely real and identifiable.”
So how much did the young actors, who brought alive these characters in a highly entertaining manner, identify with their roles?
Sukant Goel who learnt the nuances of acting under the legendary Satyadev Dubey and has been acting for seven years under other veteran directors, plays Anand. He says, “Yes, I could identify with Anand, the boy in college who peers admire and aspire to be…the cool, relaxed and charming bit. I had to think back a bit to recall the feeling of being carefree, without having the burden of earning one’s bread, what it meant to have a girlfriend, what it was like to act cheeky with your teachers and so on. I plucked some cards out of the friendship bag, how it operates at different levels with different people.”
Vivaan Shah, born into a theatre family, has been acting since childhood. An alumnus of Doon School and St Stephen’s College, Vivaan played Neeraj, the sensible one in the group, endearingly innocent.
“I don’t know how much I identified with my character but he was certainly the kind of person I have known in real life,” says Vivaan. “Apart from real life, I was inspired by my favourite actors like Jim Carrey and Ben Stiller. In projecting an awkward body language, I tried to replicate Stiller’s performance as a teenager in There’s Something About Mary.” Vivaan certainly did the innocent, awkward bit with convincing charm.
Siddharth Kumar, who played Kenny, has been acting on stage for 15 years and he reveals, “Personality-wise, I do share many traits with Kenny…emotionally, he is the least complicated in the group, and, in many ways, the least mature. He is sweet but a bit needy and lost. Frustrating and endearing at the same time. Akarsh gave me characteristics of a Goan Catholic whose Hindi is hopeless. One very useful tool our director employed was an emphasis on what other actors understand of your character. Reactions to other actors’ lines sometimes tell you more about the character you are playing.”
Chaitnya Sharma, who has been doing theatre for six years, plays Wasim. He explains, “Wasim is someone we all know—the one kid in school who is from a humble background and always trying to fit in. Wasim and I come from completely different worlds which was really interesting as an actor—to be able to dive into completely unchartered territory and still find common ground. Wasim’s upbringing has conditioned him to be a rough, tough, street-smart guy, but the vulnerability that he hides and his pent-up emotions is what really makes him who he is. Wasim uses witty language and local cuss words but what I wanted everyone to identify with is his struggle and pain.”
While Bandra may have lent a tinge of local colour to the story, Anand Express goes beyond being Bandra-centric. In fact, director Nadir Khan believes, “The four in the play are just young boys from different backgrounds and different influences, going to college where the sphere of influence is much broader than anything they have experienced up to that point.”
With Fali Unwalla’s innovative set design adding to the youthful ambience, Anand Express is eventually about an emotional and mental landscape that youngsters all over will recognize and enjoy.
(Anand Express will be staged at Kamani auditorium, Delhi, on July 8 (7.30pm) and July 9 (4 and 7.30 pm) and at JBT, NCPA, Mumbai on July 22 (7.30pm) and July 23 (4 and 7.30 pm) )
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