Murder mystery that has world laughing comes to Delhi
The Play That Goes Wrong has been called “one of Britain’s greatest-ever exports”. Premiering in a room above a London pub, it has swept audiences in 50 countries, including war-torn Ukraine, and become a modern classic in bumbling and blundering. Delhi-based Dramatech gives the story a Himachali setting and Hinglish accent and presents it as Harshvardhan Haveli Mein Hatya.
4 min read
Ananya Shrangi's play opens at the Little Theatre Group auditorium in Delhi's Mandi House on March 29. A software engineer who is making his debut as a theatre director, Ananya Shrangi, was trying to impersonate a dead body that is rising off the floor when an awkward situation makes it cough, slip and fall to the ground. “I was trying to do that and actually slipped and fell. The actor was like, ‘I’m not going to do what you just did’. I said that he was right. Before that, he had already fallen once,” says Shrangi.
As his play, Harshvardhan Haveli Mein Hatya, opens at the Little Theatre Group auditorium in Delhi’s Mandi House on March 29, Shrangi is aware of the scale of his ambition. Harshvardhan Haveli Mein Hatya is a retelling of The Play That Goes Wrong, a 2012 British production that has been adapted in 50 countries of the theatre-watching world and left audiences and critics laughing from New York to Madrid to Kyiv. The theatre critic of The Guardian has called it “one of Britain’s greatest-ever exports”.
The Play That Goes Wrong is wrapped in all kinds of legends – beginning with the one about the playwrights Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields of London’s Mischief Theatre Company working for minimum wage in a burger kitchen, a call centre and a bar, before they presented this work in a room above a pub. It has gone on to become the longest-running comedy on the West End. It has won multiple awards, including the 2015 Laurence Olivier Awards for Best Play, entered popular lingo and been used to satirise political leaders.
The Delhi show is being presented by Dramatech and will have a run at Shri Ram Centre from April 5 after opening at LTG. Dramatech, a prominent Delhi group, was formed in 1984 and brings working professionals on stage. Shrangi has been with them since 2016. He is a theatre veteran, with roles in plays, such as Munshi Premchand’s Beto Waali Vidhwa and Panch Parmeshwar, and Arthur Miller’s A Memory of Two Mondays.
The group has built the sets in intricate detail and invested highly in the production. (Express photo)
It was Shrangi’s idea to work on The Play That Goes Wrong. The story of an amateur theatre group, which is staging a play when an actual double murder takes place, is replete with the goof-ups that make for great comedy. People and props fall, floors collapse, performers forget lines and miss cues, somebody drinks white spirit instead of whisky and a dog goes missing. Like an unstoppable force, however, the show goes on through the chaos. “It’s a well-written murder mystery but, with the mishaps, takes a totally different turn. It’s really tough to put in an Indian setup. One does not get theatre to run a production exclusively for years. Then, there is British culture. The entire lingo, dialect and humour is written at the level that they would understand. The challenge was to write those jokes in the Indian context,” he says.
He moved the action to Himachal Pradesh in 1972, retaining a post-colonial atmosphere. The group has built the sets in intricate detail and invested highly in the production. The language is “60 per cent Hindi and 40 per cent is English”. There are nods to reels and viral stories on social media platforms, Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron and a Talat Aziz ghazal. Heavy in action, the actors have rehearsed long to convey physical humour with nuances. “In comedy plays, we have to maintain the balance. I wanted the Delhi audience to get fully entertained,” says Shrangi.
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