Back in Action

“All these years,I have been concentrating on directing. An actor has only one role,his own,but the director has many. I tried to balance being a director and an actor in Death of a Salesman but it left me stressed,” he explains,enumerating some of the 20 plays he’s directed in the last decade-and-a-half — Jesus Christ Superstar,Evita and A Streetcar Names Desire .

Padamsee,whose last film as an actor was as MA Jinnah in Gandhi,says he doesn’t believe in quick rehearsals. Work on The Game,thus,was a three-month affair where he got together with Merchant to recreate the lives of two elderly people — Fali Pastakia and Shireen Bamboat — who become companions over games of Rummy. “We had to keep it lighthearted but also touching,” says Padamsee and recounts a scene in which Pastakia,an Alzheimer’s patient,tells Bamboat,“I am embarrassed to ask you this but,what is my name?” Padamsee,who plays Pastakia,says this is the first time a character is of his own age. “I played a lot of elderly roles when I was in my thirties. But Fali,though in his 70s,is different from me. He shuffles while I walk tall,he has given up on life while I still go to a disco once a week to dance till dawn,” he says.

The 90-minute play has only the two actors and Padamsee is on stage from the time the curtains go up. “I had forgotten what it was to learn my lines,” he says. “Also,I had to work on my stamina to carry off a long play.”