australian indian Theatre's, salaam-e-ishq successful comedy show

cOOrParOO It was a pleasure to see the fourth wall breaking between us as an audience and the highly talented performers. The writer, director, and producer, Anu Sharma, made us part of the play smartly. One such hilarious moment was when her fake moustache wouldn't stick, and she casually told us, “Take notes; this is why the moustache was important". She has a way of bringing a show together and keeps entertaining us with her writing and acting; she was fantastic as Anarkali. Another character that stood out was Akbar, played by Navjyot, his stage presence was remarkable, and he was very well suited to the role of the king, who is playful but also stuck in his ways.

The play is loosely based on Mughal-e-Azam, where king Akbar (Navjyot Mahendru) is against the love affair between the court dancer Anarkali (Anu Sharma) and his son Saleem (Siddharth Nagpurkar). Yet, he is crazy about Umraao Jaan (Panchali K Gohain) and is scared of his wife, Jodha (Mili Mishra). So, when one of his reports Chugal Kishore (Zain Chams), tells him about the growing friendship between the two lovers, his minister Birbal (Rony Bal) gives him the idea of going to a witch Mohtarma Jackson (Neelima Kaushal) to get spells to stop the love between Saleem and

Anarkali from kindling.

On the other hand, Saleem's friend, dude-uddin (Shivam Sachdeva), advises him to approach Anarkali and profess his love to her. Every little moment in the play is captivating and makes you giggle. The choices of songs were on point as this is the first time, we’ve seen some of those numbers being performed in a very long time, making it unique amongst all the other events. We were also amazed by the costumes, which Anu says she spends time creating and ensuring that every character looks at their part. Overall a brilliant show which perfectly matched the theme of love during valentine's season.