Passage to India

I’ve just come back from India. At least that’s how it feels after a double attack of subcontinental drama. Tara Arts, in Wandsworth, has relocated Molière’s The Miser to modern India and commissioned a script from the Glaswegian standup, Hardeep Singh Kohli. He brings the two cultures together with the insouciant aplomb of an experimental chef concocting a lobster and peppercorn fruit sundae. The result may not please hardcore Molière fans, who speak in reverential tones of the master’s subtlety and elegance, his satirical adroitness and his talent for intricate and charming narrative constructions.

This is a show that confidently abandons all such sophistication. It aims for low-brow burlesque. And it scores a direct hit. On-stage musicians welcome the crowd to their seats and create an informal atmosphere like a family get-together rather than a drama. We meet Harjinder, a widowed millionaire in rags, who wants to offload his two unmarried children cheaply while finding a rich young wife for himself. He constantly urges his gadabout son to emulate the thrifty habits of Gandhi, who gave up his favourite food, mung beans, and survived on peanut butter and lemon juice instead. ‘Gandhi,’ brays Harjinder, ‘even husbanded his seed, and refused to share his wife’s bed for 50 years. Now that’s saving!’

The son is in love with the girl his father wants to marry and the daughter has fallen for the family’s handsome but skint butler. The plot feels like a Christmas panto and Jatinder Verma’s direction operates on roughly the same level. Spirited acting keeps things bubbling along. To punctuate each joke, the musicians add bongs, bangs, whoops, beeps and tra-la-las. Antony Bunsee extracts every ounce of juice from the title role and he’s well supported by Deven Modha as his bumptious son.