The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

When Deborah Moggach wrote her novel about a bunch of misfit ex-pats living in a retirement hotel in Jaipur she probably had little idea just how much the characters that she created would resonate with an entire generation of baby-boomers and 50-somethings. Seven years later, in 2011, 'These Foolish Things' became 'The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel', an ensemble movie with a stellar cast that became a sleeper hit across the world. Now, after a sequel and a reality television series, the residents and hotel staff have departed on a gruelling 38-venue tour of theatres across the UK (well, 37 theatres and a cruise ship), before moving to the West End.
 
Stop number eight on the tour is Norwich Theatre Royal, and the first thing I notice as I arrive is the amount of silver hair in the audience. This is a real shame, as ‘Marigold’ is a story that, while  examining the challenges of ageing and continuing after the loss of a partner, also confronts important issues like cultural diversity, colonialism, and forging new friendships, with a neat blend of observation, humour and sensitivity.
 
Heading up the cast for the entire tour is a Golden Ticket trio of Hayley Mills, Paul Nicholas, and Rula Lenska, but this is truly an ensemble piece with a diverse cast of fourteen actors, all of whom contribute their own spice to this magnificent feast of theatrical delight. Many of the characters are recognisable from their cinematic counterparts, but this production is much more than a celebrity re-hash. The plot has been updated and modified both to suit the stage, and to reflect the shift away from a previously unchallenged acceptance of stereotypes in modern drama.
 
However, there is one big challenge in bringing a work such as this to the stage. Whilst the narrative remains true, there are, quite simply, often just too many characters on stage at the same time. We, the audience, cannot cut and zoom in the same way that a camera can, and with up to ten speaking roles all on stage at the same time, the overcrowding of our senses results in the theatrical syntax becoming rather scrambled during busy scenes, but leaving the pace somewhat pedestrian during quieter moments. The set design by Colin Richmond is impressive – a re-imagining of the hotel that captures both the building's dilapidated state and echoes of its colonial glory (although my colleague did query the need for quite so much use of the smoke machine – presumably an attempt to create an aura of hot and dusty?).
 
Mills, Nicholas and Lenska do not disappoint, but it is Andy de la Tour as ageing lothario Norman, Marlene Sidaway as hip-op health tourist Muriel, and Richenda Carey, whose character Dorothy replaces that of Sir Graham, the retired High Cort judge from the film, who really bolster my enjoyment of this cast.
 
Nishad More immaculately captures the youthful enthusiasm of Sonny Kapoor, whilst Rekha John-Cheriyan plays his mother to perfection. The trio of call-centre workers (Anant Varman as Tikal, Shila Iqbal as Sahani, and Kerena Jagpal as Kamila) add a neat sideline in Indian workplace humour (even though the wheeling on and off stage of their computer workstations is rather clumsy and a tad contrived). Varman also doubles up touchingly as 'untouchable' hotel cleaner Mohan. Harmage Singh Kalirai takes it one better, taking on three roles as Dorothy's childhood friend Jimmy, as well as being a holy man and waiter.