“Punjabis are the party animals of India. We work hard but party even harder,” writes creator-director Mira Nair in the program note to Monsoon Wedding the musical. The revelry starts well before the show begins: Approaching St. Ann’s Warehouse, you’ll hear the sounds of a brass band spilling out into Brooklyn Bridge Park. It’s a joyous—and promising—welcome for the New York premiere of Monsoon Wedding, the theatricalization of Nair’s beloved 2001 movie.
Yet after that spirited prologue, Monsoon Wedding settles into a surprisingly conventional, paint-by-numbers musical. Apart from the celebratory rain-soaked final scene, of course—a feast for the eyes and ears, and a spectacular showcase for Shampa Gopikrishna’s choreography and designer Arjun Bhasin’s most dazzling costumes.
Plot-wise, the musical essentially mirrors the movie: Aditi (Salena Qureshi), on the rebound from an affair with her married boss, Vikram (Manik Singh Anand), is diving into an arranged marriage with Hemant (Deven Kolluri), a banker from Hoboken, N.J.; her mother, Pimmi (Palomi Ghosh), is stress-smoking; her father, Lalit (Gagan Dev Riar), is basically breaking the bank on the wedding; her happily unmarried cousin Ria (Sharvari Deshpande) is making plans to go to NYU; and the event planner, PK Dubey (scene-stealer Namit Das), suddenly has his eye on the maid, Alice (the wonderful Anisha Nagarajan, of Bombay Dreams and the most recent Company on Broadway).
The genius of the film is that it instantly plunges viewers into the bustling beauty of Delhi and the chaos of an international family wedding. The musical, however, tends to keep us at arm’s length. Aditi and Hemant’s duet “Come, O Humsafar” falls flat. And clearly the creators wanted to give Aditi a bit more backstory, but she deserves a better intro than “South Delhi Girl.” (At least she gets to wear sparkly purple boots while she’s singing “I do what I want to do/ Go where I choose/ I’ll have my choice/ I’ll get my way…”)
A deviation from the film that pays big dividends: a second-act scene where Dubey needs to literally chase down Alice and apologize for being a jerk. “What is this—a Bollywood movie?” asks Lalit incredulously. Cue the song “Chuk Chuk,” where we find Alice on a crowded train and Dubey on a fake horse, galloping furiously alongside. Oversize images of Dubey as a dashing mustachioed leading man appear on the back wall. (David Bengali’s projections, which also include some gorgeous watercolors of Delhi locales in earlier scenes, are stunners.) Apparently this is a Bollywood movie, and we’re all in.
One wishes that the creative team—composer Vishal Bhardwaj, librettists Arpita Mukherjee and Sabrina Dhawan (the original screenwriter), and lyrics Masi Asare (Paradise Square) and Susan Birkenhead (Jelly’s Last Jam)—took a few more risks when moving the story from screen to stage. According to Nair, this piece has been in the works since 2006; Berkeley Rep produced the world premiere in 2017, and a workshop in Delhi and a staging in Qatar followed in 2019 and 2022, respectively. And if I were a betting person, I’d say Wedding plans are still in the works.
Monsoon Wedding opened May 22, 2023, at St. Ann’s Warehouse and runs through June 25. Tickets and information: stannswarehouse.org
