Purane Chawal serves a flavourful slice of the past

A tale of friendship

Purane Chawal, an idiom for people with lived experience, is also the title of a two-act play directed by Sumeet Vyas. Adapted from master playwright Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys (1972), Purane Chawal is a tragicomedy about two old-time friends and comic actors, Khushaal Mehendi and Vijay Das, played by the seasoned Kumud Mishra and Shubhrajyoti Barat. Though the two performed together for 42 years, they have now fallen apart. Ghanshyam Lalsa, who plays the nephew-turned-manager, tries to mend their strained relationship. But it’s again a play that brings them together — in life and on stage.

Sumeet Vyas, of The Permanent Roommates (2014) and Tripling (2016 fame), directs the story as adapted by Farrukh Seyer and Avinash Gautam. His familiarity with the two veteran actors comes through in the play’s design and performance. “They have known me since I was 17. I have grown up watching them perform and rehearse. Directing them was nothing short of a theatre workshop for me,” says Sumeet.

Adaptations are tricky but Purane Chawal retains the flavour of the original Neil Simon play and yet, breathes a new and Indian life into it — as New York becomes Bombay, New Jersey becomes Alibaug and Weekly Variety becomes the popular Indian magazine Mayapuri. For a play written over five decades ago, one that has been adapted multiple times since, Sumeet admits that “one has to make the script palatable for today’s audience…the story of this play for me is friendship. I treated these two characters like a couple, who’ve been with each other for 42 years. From that lens, it will always remain relevant.”

Sumeet believes in letting the play evolve on the floor — a method he follows himself, be it as an actor, a writer, or a director. In the end, the goal is to create something that nods to a simple question that he asks himself: “Would I buy a ticket and watch this?”

Sumeet has been behind the curtain as much as he has been in front of it. In theatre or cinema, “everything starts with a script” but there is something special about theatre after all — “that it happens where it happens and then it is never going to happen again. It’s always a different experience because it’s alive,” he says. As for his return to “experimental theatre” after a long tryst with movies and web-series, Sumeet emits great pride and a delightful optimism: “It pushes you to step out of your comfort zone and find narratives that are more stimulating for the audience. I have really enjoyed directing plays all my life, but Purane Chawal has been the most rewarding experience for me.”

The play, a D For Drama production, premiered at the celebrated Prithvi Theatre in Mumbai, last November, where it has been staged almost a dozen times since. It is now in phase two as the crew brings it to other cities in the country. Set to perform in Bengaluru, Pune, Bhubaneswar, and Allahabad, it has already been staged in cities such as Bareilly, Lucknow, Rewa, Indore, and Delhi.

As for the future, Sumeet hopes to see (and maybe even create) more contemporary writing on stage.