Runaway hits, fragile egos: Highs and lows in artiste's life

After half-a-dozen box office hits Adi Marzban/Burjor Patel Productions were on a high. Unfortunately, this was not to last long. My suggestion to Adi to invite new directors under our banner to work with our actors with a view to giving their talent new direction did not go well with Adi. Some of the actors from Adi's group took advantage of this and weaned away Adi to relaunch his old banner Co-operative Players. I was left stranded with only my wife Ruby and my loyal friend Dinyar Contractor by my side.

Soon, however, the highly talented Hosi Vasunia got disillusioned with his old colleagues and called me up for a meeting. I did not realize I had raised a hornets' nest by calling my company Burjor Patel Productions. At the meeting he expressed a desire to join hands with me provided I call our new setup Hosi Vasunia Productions. How I wish I had given my company some fancy name like "Draamebaaz" or even just a simple name like "Star Productions". Then such a suggestion would have never come up. Ego is such a big aphrodisiac! I had no choice but to accept. We called it Hosi Vasunia Productions managed by Burjor Patel.

I was a voracious reader of plays and for our first venture we selected Woody Allen's hilarious farce called Don't Drink the Water. It was about an American tourist and his wife and daughter, chased by the Russian police for suspected spying, rushing to take refuge in the American embassy behind the Iron Curtain. How they planned their escape, aided and abetted by the other refugees in the embassy, including a Jewish priest, a cook, an Arab and the goofy son of the Ambassador moved the audiences to gales of laughter. We invited the talented Pearl Padamsee to direct. We had a bigger repertoire of actors now. Apart from Hosi, Ruby, Dinyar and Homi Daruwala, we had Farid Currim, Farida Pedder, Nikhil Kapoor and Raell Padamsee. New directors Vijay Crishna and Farrokh Mehta also joined us.

Next was a classic Feydeau farce called A Flea in her Ear. We played this period style with ladies in long gowns and fancy hats, lace fans et al and men in tailcoats and top hats or bowler hats. Another laugh riot and a huge box office success.

At that time the late Minoo Masani was pioneering a crusade for Euthanasia to be legalized in our country. In my collection of plays I came across a play by writer Brian Clark called Whose Life Is It Anyway?. It was about a man totally paralysed from neck downwards. We staged the play, which was directed by Vijay Crishna and enacted brilliantly by Homi Daruwala as the patient who was fighting for the right to end his life. It received rave reviews and was a huge box office success. Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Guzaarish revolved around the same theme with Hrithik Roshan as the patient fighting a legal battle to win the right to end his life. My daughter Shernaz played the lawyer who fought for Hrithik's cause. She won the Star Screen best supporting actress award for this role.

Plays by renowned American and British writers like Neil Simon, Ray Cooney, Ira Levin that followed were big successes and brought in new audiences.That was the golden era of English theatre and Hosi Vasunia Productions became a household name among English theatre audiences. Though my contribution officially went unnoticed, I had the satisfaction that I played an important role towards making my dream of regular weekend English theatre climb one step higher.

The author is a well-known stage personality