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The most exciting part about the musical is how it incorporates Khayyam’s original music and songs from the 1981 film. I really had to struggle for days in order to get a proper hold over the character,” confesses Pratibha. As an actor, it is very difficult to essay a character with such a complex arc. She grows up to become the famous courtesan Umrao Jaan who dares to fall in love with a Nawab. How a young girl named Amiran gets abducted from her house and is sold to a courtesan called Khanum Jaan who runs a brothel in early 19th century Lucknow. Also, the story and her life’s circumstances are so devastating.

The character belongs to a completely different age and is nothing like the lives we live today. “Pronunciation / diction wasn’t an issue for me since I have been singing ghazals since my childhood but I had to work really hard to get the acting right. She previously essayed the character of Bahar in Feroz Abbas Khan’s musical “Mughal-e-Azam”. The formal training in Indian classical music has really helped Pratibha, a 2009 SaReGaMaPa finalist, in becoming a natural choice for roles that require live singing. And so far she has lived up to it with her commitment and dedication,” says Salim. So during the quest when we set our eyes on Pratibha she looked quite suitable for the part. It’s actually a very unique skill set to possess. “ For the role of Umrao Jaan, we were looking for someone who could sing, act and dance live. What made it more difficult is that fact that the person was also required to be a good singer and a dancer. Once the idea was in place, the biggest challenge was to find someone who could essay the character of Umrao Jaan. So that’s how we got the idea of adapting Ruswa’s novel into a grand musical production,” adds Sulaiman Merchant. “There was also this thought at the back of our minds that we are not getting to hear our traditional forms of music such as folk, ghazal, khayal, and thumri in movies and on radio as much as we should. So there was a deep desire to replicate something similar for the Indian audiences,” explains Salim Merchant. But what differentiates Broadway and West End-style music is that the actors themselves sing, dance and perform live. And since we had good training we were able to use it to our advantage in our work for Hindi films. During our early training we were taught both Indian classical as well as Western music. Musicals such as ‘Phantom of the Opera’, ‘My Fair Lady’, ‘The Lion King’, ‘Wicked’, etc.

“Right from a very young age we have been watching plays, both in India as well as abroad. The composer duo previously collaborated with Goswami on “Beyond Bollywood”. The musical features live music by Salim - Sulaiman Merchant who are also the presenters of the play. But I must tell you that having a writer and lyricist like Irfan Siddiqui in our team is really an added advantage,” adds Goswami. Now, I can understand Urdu and even appreciate its nuances but unfortunately I can’t read Urdu and so I had to rely on a Hindi translation. “It was a big challenge to adapt a 19th century story for the stage. Now every director likes to bring a unique vision and so we have tried to present it keeping in mind the 21st century audiences but without diluting the source material,” reveals Goswami who has previously directed another musical“Beyond Bollywood”.īut dealing with an epic work like “Umrao Jaan Ada” was no cinch for Goswami. “It is one hundred percent pure adaptation, completely inspired by Mirza Hadi Ruswa’s book. The musical is helmed by the noted choreographer Rajeev Goswami who had the clarity from the world go that the theatrical rendition wouldn’t be a remake of the Muzaffar Ali classic. The project titled ‘Umrao Jaan Ada - The Musical’, featuring singer-actor Pratibha Singh Baghel as Umrao Jaan, is being staged in New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru Weightlifting Indoor Stadium. Only this time it’s meant for theatre and not cinema. Almost four decades later, Mirza Hadi Ruswa’s magnum opus has received another major adaptation. Over the years, the novel has had several film and television adaptations in both India as well as Pakistan – the most famous being Indian filmmaker Muzaffar Ali’s 1981 film “Umrao Jaan” starring Rekha in the eponymous role of a Lucknow-based courtesan in desperate search of true love. When Mirza Hadi Ruswa would have penned down “Umrao Jaan Ada”, which is widely regarded as the first novel written in Urdu, around the turn of 19th century, he wouldn’t have imagined that one day it will become the emblem of the Lucknow’s rich courtesan culture for the posterity.