Feroz Abbas Khan on 'Mughal-e-Azam: The Musical' going to US: ‘Nothing has been altered in the show’

Theatre director Feroz Abbas Khan.

The spectacular show with over 150 cast-crew, Mughal-e-Azam: The Musical, is based on K Asif’s film in 1960 by the same name. It had a team of writers including Kamal Amrohi, Wajahat Mirza, Ehsan Rizvi, and Amanullah Khan, music composer Naushad, and featured superstars like Prithviraj Kapoor, Madhubala, Dilip Kumar, Durga Khote and others.

Decades later theatre director Feroz Abbas Khan created a musical based on the blockbuster. In 2017, Mughal-e-Azam: The Musical bagged seven awards at The Broadway World Awards that took place in 56 cities, 11 countries. Touted to be Khan’s most celebrated Broadway-style musical, produced by Shapoorji Pallonji, the musical is all set to premier in North America soon. Khan, in a conversation with Moneycontrol, attributes his theatrical inspiration to three individuals: "Jennifer Kapoor, for artistic values and her professional journey; Ratan Thiyam, for the quality of his artistic skills. He is from Manipur and a doyen of the 'theatre of roots' movement, and his creative talent is of the highest calibre; and Peter Brook’s dramatic theoretical framework has provided me with a great deal of instruction." Edited excerpts:

An image from Feroz Abbas Khan's 'Mughal-e-Azam: The Musical'.

Mughal-e-Azam has completed 17 seasons. How has the journey been so far?
There has been a fairy tale element to the journey because we never anticipated this show to become so popular. From the onset, there were so many unanswered questions, starting with just how an iconic film like Mughal-e-Azam could be adapted to a play, how we could hope to tell this story without majestic icons like Dilip Kumar, Prithviraj Kapoor, and Madhubala or match the grandeur, the scale and the artistry of the film. So, we figured we'd run it for one season and be done. But the audiences have been amazing right from the beginning and have embraced our tribute to K Asif's magnum opus, as a work of art in its own right. We have been staging the musical for 17 seasons, have travelled across India and to different countries, and now we are off to the US. This story has become bigger than us and has acquired a life of its own. It is the audience's love that has been carrying it forward and will continue to do so in the US.

What are you looking forward to in the 13 US cities?
We are pretty much travelling across the length and breadth of the United States, including some of its most prestigious venues, including New York's legendary Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Mughal-e-Azam: The Musical will cover a significant portion of North America and will also travel to Toronto and Vancouver in Canada. And that is the power of the art that a show like this is cutting across so many geographical and cultural lines. Ideas and stories cannot be constrained by any barriers and that is why my previous works like Tumhari Amrita, Mahatma versus Gandhi, Saalgirah, among others have received tremendous positive feedback from audiences abroad. Because of the pandemic, it's been a while since I visited the US, and I am incredibly excited to take the musical there. We are, of course, hoping for a fantastic response.

Has the Mughal-e-Azam release in the US undergone any changes. You’ll be travelling far, so will it need any changes, for props or anything?
Why should anything be changed? I subscribe to the tenet, 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it.' The audience has heard so much about this show and is eager to watch it and the only thing we will strive to do is to live up to their expectations. The show itself will remain exactly as you see it in India and is an Indian production that has been brought to the US. The level of passion and love we invest in it will remain the same. Nothing has been eliminated, scaled back, or altered to make room for a production travelling abroad, it's exactly the same.

An image from Feroz Abbas Khan's 'Mughal-e-Azam: The Musical'.

You have written, directed, and produced many plays. Which of them holds a special place in your heart?
The play that is closest to my heart is Salesmen Ramlal which was an adaptation of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (1949). It broke my heart when Satish Kaushik, who had played the central role, passed away recently. Satish's performance would rank as one of the best of all time, one of the finest performances you could ever watch on stage. Nobody can come close to what he did.

The Great Indian Musical: Civilization to Nation, would you call that your dream project? 

There is no dream project that I have. I just keep dreaming as the project happens (laughs). I realised very early that whenever I try to create a dream project it never happens. Having dream projects is very self-absorbent, self-indulgent. So, I never expected to do the Great Indian Musical, it just happened. NMACC (Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre) was about to open and we needed a show befitting the grand scale and we had to showcase the best of India in terms of performance and visual arts and so the show was conceived. The vision behind it was Nita Mukesh Ambani. It was her idea to do something on a huge scale that was unprecedented and something that India would be proud of. It was supposed to open in 2020, but the pandemic stopped it. It was at a conception stage for a long time because we were waiting for things to normalise after the pandemic. While it took three years for the show to happen, operationally, it was a project that took one year. And interestingly, it was a show that was supposed to run for three nights only but went on for a month or so and that was challenging. There were no references to that kind of a show which was another challenge. It was very new, fresh, and never seen before. Looking at it you could ask if that is your dream project. In hindsight you can say it. For me it is about dreaming to do good work that affects the audience, means something to the audience, means something to the people who are doing it.