Lillete Dubey's comes to Kolkata with 'Boiled Beans on Toast'

Directed by Dubey, the play in English is by acclaimed playwright Girish Karnad.

"We have received a great response to the opening shows. The play is a delightful combination of humour, insight , poetry and a lot of  laughter," Dubey told IBNS.

She said: "As a director, I always look forward  to new plays or good old classics. I really found this one interesting. It was challenging as well."

With a duration of 105 minutes plus 15 minutes of intermission, the cast of the play are Joy Sengupta, Meenal Patel, Deepika Amin, Avantika Akerkar, Maneesh Verma , Nandita Dubey, Avnish Mehra, Gillian Pinto and Divya Unny.

"The actors had a great time doing the play," Dubey said.

The Marathi version which opened last year was extremely well received and garnered great reviews.

Boiled Beans on Toast traces the interwoven lives of  half-a-dozen people who have opted to live in the city of Bangalore.  They are very different from each other, belonging to widely divergent social strata, and from widely separated geographical corners.  Starting from under a single roof, these lives branch out in diverse directions, get entangled in the swirl of life outside where they lose track of themselves, separate or  unexpectedly  collide and careen off each other. The city is Bangalore, but anyone familiar with life in a modern Indian megalopolis will instantly respond to this portrayal of urban aspirations, conflict, blind groping and violence. 

A serene old lady  unexpectedly discovers  a passion for horse racing and is not averse to cheating  her own family; a small-town youth, devoted to his family,  gets mesmerized by prospects  of sudden  prosperity; a  trustworthy servant  of many years  is discovered  floating homeless in the nightmarish streets;  a not-very-bright young maid  learns how to fight for survival within the confines of a kitchen:  What we have is  modern city life in its many shadow-shapes, funny, tender, moving, relentless  in its pursuit of success, buffeted by ceaseless emotional  flux. 

The play will be staged in Kala Mandir on Saturday and in GD Birla Sabhaghar on Sunday.