Neev actors rehearse for Party. Picture by Aranya Sen

Mahesh Elkunchwar’s play Party, produced by fledgling group Neev which had staged four free shows in 2007, is going to tour the UK from October 10 to 20.

This time, however, the production will have to prove its commercial viability at all its venues — The Nehru Centre, Watermans and Harrow Arts Centre in London, The Lowry at Salford Quays in Manchester and Lawrence Batley Theatre in West Yorkshire.

“We have marketed the play and various people have come forward to host it but the venues are all in English-speaking neighbourhoods, so the audience will not be just Indians and Asians living in the UK. We have changed the dialect accordingly. When we did it in Calcutta, we used more Bengali and Hindi. This time we will use more English. We have also added a lot of Hindustani music, like thumri and ghazal.... The play is not at all preachy and the audience will be left to draw its own conclusions,” says Party director Udita Chakraborty.

Adapted into film by Govind Nihalani in 1984, the play centres around a high-profile party thrown by socialite Indira Sinha (played by Renu Roy) to honour acclaimed novelist Dibakar Banerjee (Ashoke Viswanathan). But as the evening party goes on, the masks begin to drop and we are introduced to a set of frustrated, self-centred people who are indifferent to the travails of the common people.

But the cast is nothing like what was seen in Calcutta last year. “Only Renu Roy, Ashoke Viswanathan and I remain. For the rest, we have fresh faces,” says Udita. The new cast includes Pradip Mitra, Meghna Mukherjee, Dhruv Mookerji, Surjya Kar and Nivedita Bhattacharjee.

The sets have also been scrapped except the basic structure, like a table and some chairs. The living room, bar area, verandah and bedroom will be demarcated by light, Udita adds.