A classic French farce is given the Bollywood treatment in Nigel Planer’s new touring show, The Game Of Love & Chai. What’s On caught up with the play’s director, Jatinder Verma... 

Mention farce to many people and what might spring to mind is an image of Brian Rix with his trousers around his ankles, as doors fly open and slam shut all around him, on the stage of the Whitehall Theatre in the 1950s and ‘60s.

In the 1970s, Fawlty Towers elevated farce to an art form, while Benny Hill’s rather implausible popularity in the United States was based on elements of the genre that were incorporated into his routines. By the ’80s, farce had become a staple ingredient of TV comedy, with the anarchic sitcom, The Young Ones, drawing heavily from the tradition to create some of TV’s most hilarious moments.
Some of the show’s most farcical scenes featured Neil, the long-haired hippie character played by Nigel Planer, so it’s rather fitting that his new play, The Game Of Love & Chai, is an adaptation of Pierre de Marivaux’s 1730 comedy farce, Le Jeu de l’amour et du hazard - albeit relocated to a modern culture far away from its original Parisian setting.

The Tara Arts production of the play shows at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, this month, and Jatinder Verma, co-founder of the company and the play’s director, is pleased to have collaborated with Planer. “This is Nigel’s version of the classic French farce, and it’s been a delight working with him. I think he’s done a very, very good job in terms of adapting it to an Asian setting.” 

The strapline for The Game Of Love & Chai is When Rani Met Raj - yet this only reveals part of the plot. In true farce tradition, before they meet and without each other’s knowledge, Rani swaps places with Sita, her cousin, while Raj makes a switch with Nitin, his driver. Confused? You won’t be, according to Verma.

“The premise is, ‘Okay, I want to disguise myself to find out if the person I’m going to marry is genuine’. Then you add to that premise another one, which is that the person who they’re supposed to be getting married to has exactly the same idea!”

As the events unfold in front of a British Asian family backdrop, Verma sees many parallels with modern society: “In an Asian setting, it gets closer to the heart of Marivaux. In the 18th century, marriage was a business, and the jeopardy that a woman faced was that her entire possessions would be given over to the man.

“That’s not that far away from the modern notion of marriage - certainly amongst Asians. The stakes for women are much greater once you put it in this sort of setting. It seemed to make more sense that she’s so determined to see if the person actually loves her, rather than loves the fact that she’s rich and she’s educated.” 

According to Verma, the play “makes no apology about falling in love, which is very much a part of Bollywood films”. 

Planer’s enthusiasm for Bollywood, arguably India’s most famous contribution to pop culture, is not overlooked on stage: “I think what’s great is that Bollywood is quite up front and in your face. For Nigel, the comedy that he likes is also in your face, so it seems to me that there’s a connection between the two.”

In the best tradition of Bollywood movies, The Game Of Love & Chai contains its fair share of tunes. “This was the other joy of Nigel’s script, that he’d incorporated the music and the songs in the text. What I find interesting is that in the plays of Moliere and Marivaux there tends to be an interlude, and in a completely different way, we’ve got those interludes in our version too. The meeting of one pair of lovers is all done through music, because they love singing, so it’s very much character-driven.”

Of course, Planer’s popularity on TV, the West End stage, the big screen and even in the pop charts was always likely to raise the production’s profile: “It has obviously meant that there’s been a greater amount of publicity, which is all very good, but from my point of view, I think the best thing is that Nigel is such a trouper. He comes to see shows, he’s been in rehearsals, he’s very prepared to move things around, and is very supportive. He has a number of ‘groupies’ who like The Young Ones, and that’s great - a number of them have come to see the show.”

So what can audiences expect to experience when The Game Of Love & Chai rolls into Coventry? “It’s a comedy, so they should expect to have a number of laughs. It’s beautifully designed and it’s got some great song & dance routines. It’s all about how tricky the game of love is, so in many ways it’s a complete and wonderful antidote to the current doom and gloom of austerity, Brexit and all that. Things are bad enough, but at least for a couple of hours in the theatre, we can think of something else.” 

The Game Of Love & Chai shows at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, from Tuesday 24 to Saturday 28 April