Get ready for Tea, Coffee Or Me

Telly actors Swapnil Joshi (Hare Kaanch Ki Chhodiyaan), Ritu Chaudhary (Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi), Kamolika Guha Thakurta (Baa Bahoo aur Baby and Kyunki), Sunil Barve (featured as Tabu's son in Mahesh Manjrekar's Astitva and the English version of All The Best) along with Prithvi Zutshi and Bhairavi Goswami come together in a Hindi play titled Tea, Coffee Or Me.

The play, a comedy, is produced by Manhar Gadhia Productions along with Jagdish Rajpurohit. It opens January 26 at the Rangsharda auditorium, Bandra.

'Comedy is a serious job'

Based on a slice of Mumbai life, it is directed by Sunil Shah and written by Mihir Bhuta.

"It revolves around a particular group of people who find themselves trapped during the July deluge in Mumbai. Each has his own viewpoints till the pouring rain clears all doubts in the mind," says Shah who returns to the floorboards after eight years.

"I am getting back to my roots. I began with theatre, turned to TV and films and now am back on the stage. The actors today are very professional. They give 150 per cent when they come for the rehearsal and they take it very seriously; as comedy is a serious job," adds Shah who is also associate director for Neeraj Vora's forthcoming film Kya Family Hai.

Not new to theatre

All the cast members have dabbled in theatre earlier. Ritu featured in Muni Jha's Sabse Bada Rupaiyya while Sunil is seen on the Marathi stage.

Kamalika who has done Bengali theatre in Kolkata earlier, makes her debut on the Hindi floorboards with Tea, Coffee or Me.

"Yes, this will be my first play in Mumbai. Before television happened to me, I used to spend a lot of time at Prithvi Theatre. I used to attend Satyadev Dubey's workshops. We would do readings of passages and by merely observing there was so much to learn," says Kamalika.

What it's about

Tea, Coffee or Me revolves around a bunch of characters with mistaken identities, chaos and mayhem all thrown in a lighter vein. According to Gadhia, "Theatre-goers all over the world mostly love comedy. And the audience should be ready for Tea Coffe or Me."

Manhar Gadhia Productions plays include A Suitable Bride (English) with Seema Kapoor, Shyam Rang (Hindi) starring Sachin Khedekar, Mantra-Mugdha (Gujarati) with Sarita Joshi and Siddharth Randeria, besides Gandhi V/S Gandhi (Hindi) starring Atul Kulkarni and Seema Biswas and its Gujarati version with Atul Kulkarni, Manoj Joshi and Meenal Patel , While Rajpurohit staged The Open Couple last year.