EXCLUSIVE: R Madhavan sneaks into Mumbai’s Chitra Cinema to watch Dhurandhar The Revenge; here’s how he made sure moviegoers didn’t realize he was seated among them

For a celebrity, watching their own film in a theatre is always a risk, as there’s the fear of being recognized by the audience, which can lead to chaos. This is especially true in single-screen cinemas. But at the same time, that’s where one gets to witness the most electric audience response. Two days ago, on April 1, R Madhavan weighed the pros and cons and took the plunge. He watched his film, Dhurandhar The Revenge, with the audience at a single-screen theatre in Mumbai. Usually, actors prefer visiting G7, aka Gaiety-Galaxy. However, R Madhavan chose Chitra Cinema in Dadar instead. Yesterday, on April 2, film exhibitor and distributor Akshaye Rathi posted a story where the actor can be seen enjoying the film. Sometime later, he also posted a picture where R Madhavan is seen posing with Akshaye Rathi and a few more friends in the lobby of Chitra. After the story and post were uploaded, Bollywood Hungama spoke to Akshaye Rathi. He said, “R Madhavan was keen to get a first-hand exp...

‘It’s like Game of Thrones!’ The return of India’s ancient superhero fantasy epic

In the 1980s, Peter Brook’s adaptation of The Mahabharata enchanted audiences on stage and screen. As Brook’s son presents a restored print at the Venice film festival, he and his team discuss the work’s extraordinary journey

When Antonin Stahly was nine years old, his mother took him to the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris to see a production of the ancient Indian epic The Mahabharata, which translates loosely as “the great story of mankind”. More than 20 actors from 16 countries performed on a stage steeped in red earth and scarred by a water-filled trench; fire also played a leading role. Directed by Peter Brook, whom the RSC founder Peter Hall called “the greatest innovator of his generation”, and adapted by Luis Buñuel’s former co-writer Jean-Claude Carrière, this spectacular Mahabharata weighed in at nine hours, plus intervals. Even at that length, it represented a massive compression of its source text, which runs to 1.8m words. Brook and Carrière’s version has been likened to summarising the Bible in 40 minutes.

Audiences could devour The Mahabharata in three parts over successive evenings or as an all-day weekend marathon; in some outdoor venues, such as the limestone quarry in Avignon where the production premiered in 1985, it began at dusk and climaxed just as the dawn sun lit up the sky. Stahly saw it in a single noon-to-midnight sitting. “It was like a superhero fantasy,” he says, still sounding awestruck. “It had Bhima, the strongest man on Earth, and Bhishma, who has the power to live for ever. Arjuna was the best warrior. And then there were all the gods. It was amazing for me, because I’m half Indian, but I wasn’t brought up in an Indian context.”

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