Classic comedy 'Andaaz Apna Apna' turns into stage play

MUMBAI: Theatre group Natya Ustaad presented a rendition of the classic 1994 Bollywood comedy film "Andaaz Apna Apna".

The play, "Tribute : Andaz Apna Apna" directed by Swati Mishra and Kartik Ojha, is a story about two slackers - Amar and Prem, who belong to middle-class families and want to make it big without putting any efforts.

The play was performed at Roseate House here on Saturday night and was produced by Arunansh and Anushka Shokeen.

It starts with Amar and Prem meeting each other during a bus journey, both having the same destination - Ooty, with the intentions of marrying Raveena Bajaj, daughter of billionaire Ram Gopal Bajaj

Speaking to IANS, Arunansh said: "It is one of the classics which is close to every theatre artist because its one of those films in which extensive focus was given to each and every character and its development and hence brining this to the stage was a dream.

"Another major reason to bring this to the stage was because the film has completed its 25 years this year. It was a challenging task to justify these iconic characters especially on a live medium because in a film you have the option of re-takes but in theatre it has to go in shot."

The story sequence being identical to the movie went on with the same timeline, but it had more vibrant expressions and the ambient lighting gave it an even more eye catching version of the classic movie.

"The major challenge we faced was to do justice to those characters which are in the minds of people but the cast though they were new and some of them were performing first time, they portrayed the true soul of each character," said Ojha, the director of the play.

"It was a tough task to manage between two things as I was co-directing the play and was also playing a major character 'Crime Master Gogo' but this would remain a memorable day as it was the first play I directed," said Swati Mishra, co-director of the play.

The cast also included Kartik Ojha (Amar), Shashank Rawat (Prem), Vishal Singh (Teja), Utsav Chatterjee (Bajaj), Gargi Dwivedi (Raveena), Suparna Khanna (Karishma), Deepak Panchal (Akela), Nakul Thakral (Sevaram), Ankit Thakur (Bhalla) and Nikita Maheshwari (Robert).

The movie was directed by Rajkumar Santoshi. It starred Aamir Khan, Salman Khan, Karisma Kapoor, Raveena Tandon, Paresh Rawal and Shakti Kapoor in the lead roles.

Source: IANS