Be ready to embrace Mughal-e-Azam: The Musical

Come March, Amdavadis will get to see one of India's greatest movie unfold on stage in the form of musical drama. 'Mughal-e-Azam: The Musical' will be played at Transtadia in Maninagar from March 8 to 11.

Speaking about the play, which has so far had 96 shows in Delhi and Mumbai, Feroz Abbas Khan, the director, said in bringing the play out of Delhi and Mumbai they had to look for a city that had the necessary infrastructure for the same. "This is why it has come to Ahmedabad," said Khan.

On the challenges in making the musical, that has garnered praise wherever it has played, Khan said the biggest challenge was to ensure that it remained true to the essence of the movie. "The movie was a legend in itself. It was important that the musical would not be a let down of its memory," said Khan.

He said the other challenges involved adapting from one medium (movie) to another (theatre). "If you did not like something in a movie, there is always an option to take retakes. However, we don't have that liberty in a play. We had to look for actors who were not only great performers, but also had knowledge of classical singing as well as could dance on stage. The songs you hear in the musical are not pre-recorded songs but actually sung by the performers during the performance," said Khan.

The musical has a cast of 100 actors which include 40 dancers. Khan said making a musical based on a film that was released several decades ago also meant they had to ensure that the language was such that could appeal to the modern audience. "The musical is 2.5 hours long while the movie was longer than that. We also took care to ensure that none of the actors imitated what was done in the original in terms of acting but instead brought their own nuanced performance," said Khan. The original movie, he said, had cost Rs1.5 crore and was produced by Shapoorji Pallonji but refused to reveal the present production cost of the musical.

Khan also said that he decided to bring Mughal-e-Azam back on stage because very few knew that the movie was based on a play. The musical has elaborate Mughal-era costumes by Manish Malhotra and choreography done by Mayuri Upadhya.