Sarita Choudhury transforms into Mother India

NEW YORK: Give her a good script and Sarita Choudhury can totally transform. She can physically melt into a character so well that audiences felt for a moment that another actress had come onto the stage. In Ayub Khan-Din’s off-Broadway comedy Rafta, Rafta Choudhury’s striking chameleon-like talents as an actor are in full play as the sultry actress turns into a prissy Indian mother.

Audiences who loved Choudhury when she debuted in Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala playing Denzel Washington’s lover were surprised to see the ease with which she slipped into her theatre role as an older woman. “Scott, our wonderful director, gave me the pair of glasses and I disappeared,” quipped the effervescent Choudhury, as she appeared relaxed at the Acorn Theatre, after a special performance for the Indo-American Arts Council.

In Rafta, Rafta Choudhury pulls back her trademark wild hair into a neat coiffure, wears prim chiffon saris, speaks with a typical Indian accent and negotiates a veritable Freudian minefield in dealing with her dysfunctional relationship with her daughter and husband who are like two bonded peas in a pod. “It was a great opportunity to play someone and understand someone not like me,” Choudhury told DNA.  

Not long ago, Choudhury would have been playing the feisty young bride at the centre of Rafta, Rafta. “It’s taken me a while to adjust. I’ve always played the younger generation, so it’s comical for me to be playing what I rebelled against. But as I get older, the roles get better,” Choudhury, aged 41, told The Daily News.The half-Indian, half-English actress has a key role in an upcoming TV series that will keep her busy after Rafta, Rafta ends on June 21. She said she believed the availability of acting roles for women over 40 was increasing.

“When Mississippi Masala came out, no one knew what to do with my look,” she says. “Back then, to be black was okay, but to be Indian in America? That wasn’t so useful. So I studied and got my American accent down and feel I’ve escaped being pigeonholed. Still, every time I get to play an Indian role, it’s exciting. I feel like I’m honouring what my father taught me,” she told the newspaper. Choudhury leads a starry stage line-up of fellow film actors Ranjit Chowdhry, Sakina Jaffrey and Alison Wright. Manish Tiwari and Reshma Shetty who are the jinxed Indian newlyweds at the heart of the plot make an impression in the off-Broadway debut.

Khan-Din adapted Rafta, Rafta from a 1963 play by Bill Naughton called All in Good Time. It was a triumph at the National Theatre in London last year and this American production looks set to run to full houses.

The plot sounds like the stuff of sitcom; the newlyweds are thrown into a crisis as the groom can’t deliver in the bedroom. Khan-Din’s emphasis on the boisterous Indian household means the entire family shares in the young groom’s excruciating predicament. But beyond the laughs, the play is a sensitive exploration of universal family issues. The gags about Bollywood, Indian singers and Bhangra had the predominantly Indian American audience rolling in the aisles. Khan-Din said he was turning his play into a movie “No one has been cast,” said the Khan-Din. Audiences are hoping Choudhury will reprise her role in the film version.