REVIEW: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel at the Mayflower Theatre

Tonight, the Mayflower was transformed by story, set and score from sunny Southampton to the miraculous Marigold. Cheesy I know, but this play has adapted a story that many of us know from book, to the big screen (twice), to the stage. And you know what? It just really works! Writer Deborah Moggach, who also wrote the the novel ‘These Foolish Things’ which inspired the multi-award winning film, wrote this play to be fast moving and to take a somewhat ‘taboo’ subject as the key theme. As she said herself: “If it was a novel, you could explore all the past stuff, but with screenplays and plays we have to propel the action forward.”

Action isn’t the exact word that I’d use to describe the play, but that’s fine considering the nature of the story that is being told. The show, like the film, is about an eclectic group of British retirees, that move to India to live in luxury for the rest of their days; but the luxury residence is actually far from what they were promised. The story is about unexpected charm, revelations and feel-good heart-warming moments. All things that the whole cast and crew managed to portray. One thing that I was very impressed by throughout the show was the brilliant use of direction and more importantly misdirection. To avoid spoilers, it seems as if director Lucy Bailey has really concentrated on the importance of transformation and surprise through movement and where our eye is fixated when key events take place. Extremely well thought out and polished.

The role of ‘Madge’ played by Belinda Lang was a stand-out performance. In a play that can be quite slow-paced, Lang hit every line perfectly and managed to convey a mixture of emotions to the audience, especially in the deserved laughter that she received over and over again. Of course this was aided by the rest of the cast who played off of each other perfectly, a cast that was perfectly selected! Tessa Peake-Jones who played the role of ‘Evelyn’ also managed to control the audience and did extremely well in changing the pace of dialogue from more serious points to more light-hearted banter throughout.

All the cast played their roles to perfection, whether they had lots of dialogue or little to no dialogue. This leads me on to having to give Anant Varman (playing the roles of ‘Mohan/Tikal’) a special mention as this was his professional UK stage debut and, even with his lack of lines, he was one actor that I just couldn’t take my eye off whichever character he was playing. Talk about stealing the limelight, bravo!

Nishad More (Sonny Kapoor) and Shila Iqbal (Sahani), do well in sharing a strong on-stage bond together when portraying the classic ‘will they, won’t they’ love affair that no good story is complete without. So props to casting director Ginny Schiller as it’s hard to find any fault in this experienced cast that have just clicked together.  

As for the set and lighting, it was magnificent. The fixed set manages to take us to a number of different places and when paired with the lighting changes, it was seamless. The detail that Colin Richmond (costume and set designer) and Oliver Fenwick (lighting designer) have gone into is unbelievable! By intertwining their work together, they’ve managed to make the same set look run-down, like new, like we were indoors, like we were outdoors, and even like we were in different rooms behind invisible walls – all on one stage. Just speechless work! This paired with the impressive direction, acting and minimal set movement of the odd chair, table or wheelie desk is incredible. Of course the set and characters can’t really be brought to life without the help of some music. Composer Kuljit Bhamra has managed to source a range of moods and emotions from haunting and mysterious to playful and cheery by mixing a palette of genres which he says are a mix of “Indian Classical, British Bhangra and Bollywood styles”.

The first half of the play seemed a little bit slow in terms of keeping the audience engaged it seemed. The story itself was actually moving very quickly but it just felt as if we weren’t learning much or going anywhere of significance. This of course made it quite confusing when we’d jump forward in time or all of a sudden find ourselves at a new talking point. In the interval I overheard some other audience members saying that they got lost at points in Act 1 and couldn’t really understand certain points of the story or where the story was going. I have to say, if you didn’t know the basis of the storyline or hadn’t read the book or seen the film, I’d agree that you’d be lost in what is happening at times and definitely be wondering in what direction the story is going. This did however change after the interval as Act 2 commenced. You could start to see a clear path of where everything was going and it all just seemed that much clearer to understand – like what was being said and done had a point.

Having said this, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel takes you on journey of some quite dark themes and events but makes light of them. It’s not offensive in the way it’s done, it’s clever and efficient and I left the theatre in an uplifted, good mood. It really is a feel-good show and I think the whole company and everybody involved has done a fantastic job at portraying the story in this way. There’s always a fear that something like this won’t translate well from screen to stage, but this just works really well. The play has a few stops left on its UK tour before it heads for its London West End debut and I wish everybody involved all the luck and success they deserve.