Larger than life

Paritosh Painter’s new production I Am The Best captures the madness of reality shows and aims to be a visual extravaganza complete with magic, comedy and music.


Theatre has always been Paritosh Painter’s first love. The actor-director’s association with the stage dates back to his college days two decades ago. After directing and acting in several hit productions like See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil, Paying Guest and Get Rid Of My Wife, Painter aspired to tread new ground and present a production on the lines of a Broadway musical to theatre aficionados. He decided to amalgamate reality television with magic in his latest work I Am The Best.

The play, which recently had a sneak preview, will be staged from May 1 to 31 at Mumbai’s Rangsharda Auditorium. It follows the adventures of two magicians — Aditya and Manav — who are the participants in India’s greatest reality show I Am The Best. As part of the show, they have to stay in a house for a month, perform various tasks delegated by the host and outperform each other. The winner will eventually be conferred with the title of I Am The Best. While Ninad Kamat and Joy Fernandes play the two magicians, Shreyas Talpade essays the role of the show’s larger-than-life host who also informs the audience about the regular developments in the reality series.

Explaining what prompted him to capture a reality show on stage, Painter says, “I wanted to do something larger than life. Several musicals and mythologies have been adapted for theatre. Though reality and magical shows have entertained us, they have never been captured on the Indian stage, so I decided to amalgamate the two and present a visual extravaganza to theatre lovers.”

The actor-director, who came up with this idea almost two years ago, was clear that he wanted to showcase tricks at par with international standards in this ambitious project. After roping in his friends —Kamat, Fernandes and Talpade — he then contacted Mangesh Desai, a magic consultant. Desai sent him a few videos that featured tricks performed by ace magicians like David Copperfield and Lance Burton. Painter says, “I told Mangesh that we would do only the finale acts performed by these magicians. The whole idea was to amaze the audience and show them something that they have never before seen on stage.” Apart from other illusions, Painter aimed to show tricks like quick dress-change (where the magicians change dresses in half a second), the classic head-cut (where a person appears beheaded) and playing with light in the air (where the source of light is not visible to the audience) in the play.

But it was quite an uphill task. Painter soon realised that not only did Indian venues have several limitations but there was also a dearth of quality equipments. He explains, “Abroad, there are some venues that are built especially for grand magic acts and have the necessary acoustics and infrastructure. But in India, the scene is quite different. Since there are few professional magicians, the venues and equipments are not up to the mark. We didn’t want to compromise on the quality, so we had to work within these constraints.”

After buying the equipments, art director Ashish Ranade had to upscale them by breaking them down and then rebuilding them so that they could serve the purpose. Painter and Desai also ordered for several books from abroad and used them as references.

Since the last three months, Desai has been training the cast to master the skills of a magician. Painter says, “We soon realised that in order to perform these tricks, a magician should not only use the right technique but also be a good actor to distract the audience. Magicians are trained quite differently from actors. So Ninad and Joy first had to learn those nuances.”

The play that has been produced by Painter’s production house also boasts of lavish sets. While in a regular play, sets are worth just Rs 2-3 lakh, in I Am The Best sets worth Rs 45 lakh have been used. It also features a gigantic TV set in the midst of the stage that Talpade uses to communicate with the participants and the audience.

Since Talpade had date constraints, his portions have been recorded earlier but Painter had to ensure that when the play is staged, viewers feel that the actor is performing live along with the cast. He says, “This has never been attempted before on the Indian stage. Everything had to look real time. So Shreyas, Joy and Ninad had to rehearse vigorously for split-second timing.”

Though Painter has taken a huge risk by attempting such a gargantuan task, he is happy that the 45-minute preview got a good response. He is now aiming to include four more illusions in the 115-minute play when it premieres in May and is also planning to stage it abroad. Ask if he would like to stage the play once especially for David Copperfield and he laughs out aloud, “I would love to stage I Am The Best. After all, his tricks have been featured in it. So I will definitely not rule out the possibility.”