Close calls and royal encounters

Earlier I had asked Diana what it was like to be a princess. She replied, It is like being a movie star under the bad old Hollywood studio system. Your protocol manager decides how you dress, where you go and who you meet. I see my life as a long corridor with everything circumscribed within. Of course, my husband and my sons don’t mind because they have been brought up to be princes. The trouble is, I haven’t. I miss doing my own thing’.

In the theatre, there is no Take Two. The fear of making a complete ass of myself causes me to have umpteen technical rehearsals. I believe that it’s better to be safe than suicidal. That is why I always keep Plan B ready, because Plan A invariably goes haywire. Nevertheless, Murphy’s Law (whatever can go wrong will go wrong!) operates in spite of the most painstaking preparations.

For example, my production of Hamlet caused a sensation in ways I had not planned. The very trim and well-groomed veteran actor Farrokh Mehta had just completedhis cameo as the gravedigger to heartwarming applause. As he bent down to pick up Yorrick’s skull from the grave (which was cut into the platform), my super-efficient stage manager slammed down the lid of the grave in the blackout… entombing the hapless Farrokh underneath the platform for the rest of the play. In Bombay theatrelore, this incident is referred to as Yorrick’s Revenge’!

The theatre has given me such an incredible variety of experiences that I often feel I’ve crammed a dozen lifetimes into one. Take the time when I was directing Irwin Shaw’s Bury the Dead for the St Xavier’s College Dramatics Club.

This was in 1968, and I was very into Stanislavsky. So I insisted that my young cast undergo the rigours of army training. The play is about soldiers who refuse to die, and rise from the dead like zombies. So I arranged with an army friend of mine to show my boys how to march with a full pack, load a rifle and even dig a trench.

Bright and early one Sunday morning, as dawn was breaking overthe military cantonment in Upper Colaba, my sleepy-eyed regiment of actors was six feet below ground level, shovelling away and sweating from every pore. At the end of this gruelling test, I was left with only six soldiers. The rest deserted me. At the climax of the play, the general orders his troops to open fire on the advancing dead men, who won’t lie down.

Taking realism to its ultimate, I loaded the rifles with blanks. At the command of the general, the firing squad marched down the aisle, from the backdoor of the auditorium in perfect formation. They then lined up at the footlights, and on command, raised their rifles and opened fire.

The noise was deafening. Acrid smoke from the gunpowder blanks filled the hall. Three out of the four walking dead’ continued to advance towards the firing squad (as planned). But one of the corpses’ began to retreat in fear shouting, You crazy bastards! You’re supposed to aim above our heads. You hit me with a wad of cardboard that is part of the goddamn blanks!’ Ialmost had another deserter on my hands that night.

Accidents happen in real life, in spite of the best precautions. For stage effects, I make it a point to test every stage device myself before allowing my actors to risk their necks. In Marat/Sade, the famous guillotine effect required the heavy blade to fall with a thud, seeming to sever the neck of the victim. To achieve this effect, I had a guillotine built that had two safety catches to stop the blade three inches before it hit the neck of the actor. With theatrical flourish, and a mock farewell speech to my cast, I placed my head on the block and asked my stage manager to release the rope that was holding up the blade. The blade came down like the sword of Damocles. It was neatly stopped by the two safety catches, and as I grinned with relief, a ripple of appreciation ran round the cast. Okay, positions please, everybody. Let’s start the scene’. The actor who was playing the aristocrat to be beheaded placed his neck gingerly in the slot. He looked upapprehensively at the gleaming blade, eight feet above his head. The drums rolled, and at the cymbal clash, the executioner released the rope. The blade flashed downwards.

The aristocrat screamed as one of the safety catches gave way, and the blade hovered half an inch away from his exposed neck. I rushed forward shouting, I’m going to decapitate the carpenter who built this lousy guillotine!’ The poor actor had nightmares for months afterwards and even developed chronic insomnia, according to his distraught wife. Kabir Bedi, who played Othello in my 1990 production, almost developed a nightmare syndrome too. My Othello doesn’t suffocate Desdemona with a pillow. Instead, I planned he strangles her with the incriminating handkerchief. Since the hanky is vital to several characters, I insisted on having five identical hankies. One each, for Othello, Desdemona, Iago, Cassio and Emilia, so that the all-important hanky would never be missing. As luck would have it, Kabir’s dresser forgot to place thehandkerchief in the pocket of his gown at one fateful show. At the climatic moment, where Othello growls, Down, strumpet!’ Kabir reached into his pocket and groped desperately. Nothing there.

There was a deathless pause (pun intended) as Kabir’s hand emerged from his pocket horribly empty. Sitting in the audience, I groaned audibly. My solicitous neighbour mistook my agony and whispered, It’s only a play’. The blonde and bubbling school-girlish Nikki Vijaykar was already halfway through Desdemona’s last words, But while I say one prayer’. Kabir, with magnificent stage presence, raised his large hands, sans handkerchief, towards Desdemona’s throat. Nikki desperately tried to extricate her own copy of the handkerchief from her nightgown, but Kabir thundered, true to the Bard, It is too late!’ and proceeded to strangle Desdemona with his bare hands. After the curtain fell, Kabir was tempted to perform a second strangulation on his dresser!

The best-laid plans of mice and men, as we know, often gohaywire. The first time we shot the girl in the waterfall for Liril, was in Khandala, where the waters were balmy. But I thought the results were anaemic. So the producer, Kailash Surendranath, travelled all over India, and finally chose the Kodaikanal waterfall for a re-shoot. The next morning, bright and early, Karen Lunel – the diminutive water sprite with lovely dancing eyes and a dazzling smile that lights up her whole face – donned her lime-green bikini and stepped radiantly into the waterfall. Within a few seconds, the poor girl turned blue. It was freezing. The water was 4 degreeC. So instead of the Liril girl’s flashing smile, all we could see were her chattering teeth.

In our innocence (or was it stupidity?), we had selected November as the month for the shooting. Still, Karen was a real sport. Fortified with a few slugs from a bottle of rum, she gave the performance of her life, dancing and cavorting in the icy water like a Nordic sea nymph. For over a decade, Karen continued to thrill viewerswith her seemingly effortless performance. Radiating sunshine and joy. (Did the naughtiness in her eyes reflect Liril or Old Monk?)