Every Good Boy Deserves Favour: This play by Sir Tom Stoppard comes to the NCPA Mumbai

Every Good Boy Deserves Favour is a political satire by multi-award-winning playwright Sir Tom Stoppard and celebrated conductor/composer André Previn. Billed as ‘A play for actors and an orchestra’, the National Centre for the Performing Arts’ new production of this rarely performed landmark theatre event features an all-star cast and a 45-piece orchestra playing live on stage by the Symphony Orchestra of India. Sir Tom Stoppard himself is planning to be in attendance for what is sure to be the must-have ticket of the season. Bruce Guthrie, Head of Theatre at the NCPA, said, “When I took up my role as Head of Theatre & Films at the NCPA, Chairman Mr. Khushroo N Suntook and I discussed plays where cross-genre collaboration could take place. We want to create productions that you could only see at top international venues. Every Good Boy Deserves Favour fits those criteria perfectly. It is an honour to work with the brilliant musicians of the SOI who, under the leadership of Marat Bisengaliev, are known internationally as an orchestra of great quality. Only a handful of companies around the world are capable of mounting this kind of production, so we are delighted to be doing this incredible piece of theatre with a wonderful team of people.” The cast includes Neil Bhoopalam , Denzil Smith, Sohrab Ardeshir, Deepika Deshpande Amin & Mihaail Karachiwala. The multi-award-winning international creative team is led by the NCPA Head of Theatre & Films Bruce Guthrie as director, Mikel Toms conducting the Symphony Orchestra of India, Francis O’Connor as designer, Pallavi Patel as costume designer, Rick Fisher as lighting designer, Andy Collins as sound designer, Rachel D’Souza as movement director and Mathew Scott as Music supervisor. [caption id=“attachment_11368681” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Deepika Deshpande, Neil Bhoopalam[/caption] The play brilliantly counters the Soviet iron with Stoppard’s style of irony and shows the terrors of living in an orchestrated society. The plot begins with Alexander Ivanov’s imprisonment in a Soviet mental hospital, from which he will not be released until he admits that his statements against the government were caused by an alleged mental disorder. Alexander’s son begs his father to free himself with a lie. In the hospital, he shares a cell with a genuinely disturbed schizophrenic, also called Alexander Ivanov, who believes he is part of an orchestra. Previn’s music is evocative of the Russian classical style. The orchestra appears on stage as a character in the play. This is a play where the music and the text are completely interwoven. Guthrie shares, “The play is a brilliantly funny, relevant piece that combines spectacle with emotion and conflict. It is Orwellian in tone, it asks questions on the nature of freedom of speech and expression that act as a warning, from history to the modern age.” [caption id=“attachment_11368691” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Denzil Smith[/caption] Sir Tom Stoppard spent his early life in India as a student at Mount Hermon American Multi-Racial School in Darjeeling after his family fled the Nazi occupation of Europe, which is why he has always felt a connection with India. The play being produced and staged in India is like homecoming. His darkly funny and provocative play asks the audience if denying the truth is a price worth paying for liberty. The Guardian stated the play to be - “An all-encompassing piece of total theatre. The situation is classic Stoppard. Two men share a cell in a psychiatric hospital. Alexander is a political prisoner, Ivanov a genuine mental patient who hears an orchestra in his head. Around this Stoppard weaves a work, reconciling wit and anger, that reminds us that one of the worst features of tyranny is its ability to reorder reality. The perfectly sane Alexander will only be released once he admits he is mad, and his plight is worsened by the fact that he has to coexist with an orchestral fantasist and that his future depends on a colonel who is a doctor of philology. Catch-22 meets Alice in Wonderland.” Experience the brilliance at the Jamshed Bhabha Theatre, NCPA from the 4th to the 6th of November 2022.

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