The iconic Shammi Kapoor has rarely been portrayed with such glee and verve as in actor Puja Sarup’s evocation of him in the new play, The Gentlemen’s Club (also called Tape - The King of Drag ). In the play’s zany speculative universe, Mumbai’s night life is ruled by drag kings; women who perform as men, swagger and all. Sarup takes on the Shammi Kapoor persona and regales audiences kitted out in an Elvis-style gold lamé jacket and an out-sized wig straight out of the swinging 60s. Here, we feature her in conversation with writer Vikram Phukan , who collaborated on the devised project with Sarup, Sheena Khalid and Rachel D’Souza of The Patchworks Ensemble.
I think it was one the first things we decided on: Shammi Kapoor. In the West, Elvis Presley is really big with drag kings, and Shammi’s always been called the Indian Elvis, so it wasn’t that much of a stretch. I could totally see you in the part.
Yeah, I remember you looked at me and said that my eyes were like Shammi’s. We even retained that line in the play. I went home and ransacked Youtube, looked at songs, clips of dialogue, anything I could find. I thought, ‘wow, this is really exciting’. Once, I was trying my moves at home, and my fiancé was taken aback by how much of a likeness I seemed, without even the costume. That hit it right there.
There is no doubt he was one of the more flamboyant stage performers ever. What did you find most appealing?
In that song, ‘Baar baar dekho’ (China Town, 1962), he is so extremely suave. In ‘Tumse achcha kaun hai’ (Janwar, 1965), he is so extremely crazy. There is so much raw power in him. All that music seems to have been custom-fitted to his persona.
What do you feel when you are performing as Shammi Kapoor? Of course, you take on various personas in the play, but this became the definitive act.
See, with my other persona, the sexist estate agent, I can really wing it. There is a lot of material to work with. With Shammi, we had choreographed production numbers. The main thing that I must stress is that I am not mimicking the man. What I tap into is his joie de vivre, that jaan. If you see him, he really celebrates life. The screen lights up. For me, just harnessing that explosion of energy for those few minutes is a big high. And people really get into it. At one of the shows, they were all singing along to ‘Badan pe sitare’ (Prince, 1969). A particular moment that I’ve noticed is just before I mime a sequence from China Town , a confrontation between two brothers, both played by Shammi. We call it ‘Shammi vs Shammi’. There is some stillness before it, but at the very first gesture I make to the sneering voiceover, the crowd erupts.
So what do you think he would make of all of this?
As I say in the play, you should never meet your idol; either he’s going to hate you, or you’ll be disappointed. But Shammi, I would have loved to meet him. He was a wild child. I think he would like anything that was a little whacky, like our play. I really think his hand was on us. We joke about that in the play but like you had mentioned, on the day of our Centrestage festival show, a Shammi number was blaring on the taxi you took to the NCPA. Just before you called up today, I actually dreamt up a whole performance of the show.
That reminds me of my poor job at the real life show. I just couldn’t make out the volume levels. There was that little speculative story we made about his first encounter with his wife, Geeta Bali, when I unearthed that film, Rangeen Raaten (1955), in which she played a man. It was her first film with him. Their son credits her for much of his way out persona.
Yeah, she was acting as the heroine’s brother. So, they dressed her in these misshapen clothes, with a pencil thin moustache, and a mole on the cheek. We liked to think that he fell in love with her when she was dressed like a man.
It was a whirlwind romance, and after that schedule in Ranikhet, they landed in Kathgodam, and the next day they were married. I mean, facts have been changed, but you get my drift. Her get-up must have counted for something. So, I think Shammi was into stuff that was a little whacky. He wasn’t your regular kind of guy. I think he would’ve appreciated something that was not necessarily the norm.
