Felicity Kendal's Indian Shakespeare Quest

This is my mother and father, Laura and Geoffrey.

When Shakespeare played, the stage was bare.

Of temple, palace, font or stair.

Three broadswords fought the battle out.

Three supers made the rabble rout.

They never were conventional parents.

Here they are, doing what they loved most of all, playing Shakespeare.

In the land they loved most of all, India.

Here is my space, kingdoms are clay.

When this footage was shot, in the late 1970s,

they'd been living there for nearly 30 years.

They ran a theatre company,

touring Shakespeare across the subcontinent.

And I was a part of it from the start.

I'm Felicity Kendal,

and I made my stage debut as a baby in India.

I loved it as my home, until I left for England at the age of 17.

-SHE SPEAKS HINDI

-Mineral water?

Now I'm back in the country of my childhood,

to discover how my family's experiences

fit into a bigger drama.

The extraordinary tale

of India's unexpected love affair with Shakespeare.

My journey will bring me face to face with my family's history...

Why did you discontinue?

..closer to Shakespeare...

'This is not like it is in Elizabeth Arden, I can tell you.'

..and closer to India too.

There's a legend that Shakespeare was born in south India

and his original name was Shishupa Araya.

I'll uncover a story about art and politics...

If you think that people love Shakespeare

and I love Shakespeare,

that's only partially true. The truth is you hate it also.

..passion and inspiration...

And I think one of the reasons Shakespeare works

is it's like our epics, you know?

It's sort of HUGE life!

..and what it means to belong.

-This is your home.

-So I've come back.

You're always welcome, darling.

Could a relationship forged in the days of Empire

still live on in modern, maddening, marvellous India?

My quest for Indian Shakespeare begins in Kolkata,

or Calcutta, as we called it when I first lived here.

I grew up in this city so I know it well.

And I didn't know about this, but apparently there's a memorial

or there's a plaque, or there's something to Shakespeare.

CAR HORNS BLARE

Whoops! Someone just went into a bus!

-SHE LAUGHS

-I love India!

-SHE SPEAKS HINDI

-I've asked him to go to the side.

because I want to ask some people if they know anything about it.

Excuse me? Excuse me?

Hindi bolte hain?

Shakespeare Sarani?

-So, Shakespeare Street? Yeah?

-Shakespeare Street?

Yahan kya hai...er, memorial, plaque to Shakespeare?

Um, for Shakespeare?

-Statue?

-Statue, yeah!

I don't think there is any statue of Shakespeare.

-No Shakespeare statue?

-No, I don't think.

OK, thank you. No Shakespeare statue.

Definitely no Shakespeare statue.

Well, that's a bit of a piss, but never mind.

I'm not going to give up, because I think there may be.

SHE SPEAKS HINDI

I'm asking if there's a statue to Shakespeare.

No, he's not interested.

He sells eggs and he says there is no Shakespeare Sarani,

so there we go.

When you ask people the way, they invariably don't know it.

OK, I'm going to go and see if I can do anything on foot.

We Kendals seem to have a nose for Shakespeare.

I knew I'd find him in the end!

-SHE LAUGHS

-Was it worth it? I'm not sure!

There's the little guy. "In memory of the 4th centenary..."

CAR HORNS BLARE

Never film in Calcutta!

"..4th centenary of Shakespeare's birth."

Well, there you are.

I'm not surprised nobody knew it was here, to be honest,

because it's hardly a memorial.

But it's nice to know he's here, and that's just the beginning.

Ah!

He looks a fish out of water.

But there's a good reason why he's here.

Because this was once Calcutta's theatreland.

That was in the 18th century, after the city was colonised

by the merchants of the British East India Company.

They came to trade, but many ended up settling.

And one of the home comforts they brought with them

was Western-style theatre.

So this cemetery right in the centre of Calcutta,

-it's full of Europeans.

-Mmm-hmm.

And these were the people that brought European theatre,

I guess, to India for the first time.

-Correct.

-And when would that have been?

In Calcutta, it would have been in the 1760s.

-Good lord!

-Yeah. If not earlier.

And when would Shakespeare have come in?

The earliest records that we have suggest 1780.

The early shows were exclusively for expats,

who made up audience and cast.

At first all the actors were men, just as in Shakespeare's time.

The first Shakespearean production in 1780 of Othello,

which is going to be a significant play in Indian Shakespeare,

mentions the actor who played Desdemona as a Mr H,

"A gentleman of doubtful gender."

Which is obviously an in joke

for the very small community at that time.

-Oh, Mr H! Oh, to see you now!

-It's so contemporary!

-I wonder if he's here!

-THEY LAUGH

-Poor Mr H!

-We don't know the full name.

Well, he was probably a very good Desdemona, clearly.

Must have been, yes!

THEY LAUGH

Is there any point where the Indians

are actually acting with the British in a performance?

Because there's some idea that this never happened.

No, no, no. In fact, it was a sensation

when it did happen in 1848.

This Bengali gentleman, Baishnab Charan Auddy, A-U-D-D-Y,

being cast as Othello.

And the rest of the cast is English.

And we have snippets from the newspapers of that time,

and particularly two phrases that I would like to highlight for you.

"A real, unpainted, nigger Othello,

"who set the whole world of Calcutta agog."

Now if that's not a sensation with, again, Othello the key play,

I don't know what is.

It had repeat performances. People flocked to see it.

So within these 100 years from the 1750s to the 1850s,

you had Shakespeare going from being performed

only by the British for themselves,

to Shakespeare being naturalised and accepted.

It would be another 100 years before my family

entered the story of Shakespeare in India.

And Calcutta was the setting for some of my happiest memories.

This is Sudder Street, where I grew up.

And along here, I used to go to school

and the place where I'm going to visit

is an amazing and wonderful hotel where we stayed every year.

For more than 70 years, this legendary establishment

has been run by the same family.

I'm nearly here.

I'm going to meet Violet, who I've known since I was a child,

and she's usually somewhere around the corner.

Oh, God!

Oh, you look absolutely gorgeous!

-Look at you!

-You're most welcome!

You look younger than when I last saw you!

My secret is all my lovely toy boys I got rid of.

-You got rid of them?

-Yes, and I'm getting a new set.

THEY LAUGH

-I'm 91.

-You're not!

-I am!

It's wonderful.

Oh, I tell you, I remember coming here

when I was probably five or six.

What I remember, and I thought they were wonderful,

-they used to have snake charmers that used to come.

-That's right.

And you could buy a mongoose or not,

which was a bit gruesome, and have the mongoose killed, or not.

'The adventures that brought us to the Fairlawn began in 1944,

'when my parents toured India with ENSA, the army entertainment outfit.

'After the war they returned with their own company.

'A motley assortment of actors, some British, some Indian,

'including my big sister, Jennifer, and yours truly.

'We travelled far and wide,

'playing Shakespeare to Indian audiences

'in schools, theatres and even Maharajah's palaces.

'Later, our experiences inspired this film, Shakespeare Wallah,

'in which I acted alongside my parents.'

Don't you want to see the wide, wide world?

Plenty of chances there for a bright girl.

'The film changed the course of my life.

'It was the catalyst for me to leave India for a new career in England.'

HE WHISTLES

'My father was furious.

'He saw it as an act of desertion

'and didn't forgive me for several years.

'I broke the news to him here, at the Fairlawn.

'And leaving India also meant saying goodbye to childhood friends,

'including Vi's daughter, Jennifer.'

-Oh, my darling!

-It's been 47 years

-since we've seen each other!

-Is it really?

When you left Bombay to go to England.

To do your thing.

God, we're not that old! It can't be!

It can't be 47 years!

I'm just having a little weep! I'm crying!

We had wonderful, wonderful times, and we were very, very naughty.

-Very naughty!

-We had a wonderful time.

Did we smoke in those days?

-I think we did have our first cigarette.

-Did we?

Well, I certainly had my first cigarette in one of these rooms!

-SHE LAUGHS

-I'm not quite sure!

Probably on the veranda in those days!

No, but when we used to come, I was always as a child

-rather nervous when everyone was checking out.

-Sure.

-Because my dad very often didn't have enough money.

-He always paid.

Did he? Oh, good. The difference is, he loved it here

and he always wanted to come back.

I think of all the places all over India,

this was the place that they thought was home.

Well, this IS your home. You're always welcome, darling.

Wow, this is bringing back some memories.

I remember up on the roof, open air,

very early in the morning, we used to rehearse.

My father would take all his actors up there

and rehearse The Merchant Of Venice or something like that.

Along here, we used to stay in these rooms.

Round the corner is the big, large room

where my father used to put on shows

for the members of the public who happened to be trapped.

This hotel was really like my first home,

and strange enough, this is also where I left to go to England

when I was 17, having never been there since I was a baby.

So this was my passage from India, if you like.

It started here.

So I left one home to try and find another.

I have to say, I like this one better.

Calcutta was my first Indian home, and Shakespeare's too.

But it wasn't long before the word began to spread.

I've travelled west to Delhi,

which succeeded Calcutta as the capital of British India.

By the 19th century,

the East India Company was extending its reach.

Backed by the British Government,

they weren't afraid to use force to secure their interests.

After claiming new territory,

they recruited locals to administer their emerging Empire.

This laid the foundations for the Indian Civil Service

and created a demand for educated Indians.

Shakespeare was about to take centre stage in Indian classrooms too.

There was in fact a very heated debate

about the kind of education the East India Company would promote,

between what were called the Orientalists and the Anglicists.

The Orientalists said

education should be conducted in the mother tongues,

and importance should be given

to the Indian classical languages and literature.

Naturally, yeah.

The Anglicists said all education should be in English,

so that it promotes an understanding

of Western literature and Western cultures.

Macaulay, who was the chief architect of this view,

believed as he said in his very infamous remark,

that a single shelf of European literature

is worth all the literatures of the Indian languages put together.

My goodness! The arrogance, isn't it?!

It's the arrogance!

'In 1835, Macaulay's policy became law,

'and English became the official language of Indian administration.'

And which sees Rosalind setting up her own wooing of Orlando.

English literature courses

with Shakespeare in a starring role were common in Indian universities

long before they were introduced in Britain.

But whilst he was promoted as a tool of Empire,

no one seemed to bargain for the fact

that Indians might actually enjoy his plays.

-Why does he ask for a kiss?

-THEY GIGGLE

-She's disguised herself!

-THEY LAUGH AND CHATTER

Isn't that most natural, when lovers meet?

Before long, Indians weren't only studying Shakespeare,

they were performing him too.

And that's when the plays really catch fire.

I can't imagine how those first students felt

when they first crossed paths with Shakespeare.

So I've travelled to Dhrangadhra, in the state of Gujarat.

This was once the royal palace.

Now it's a school.

It was set up 20 years ago by Kanchan Kumari.

Her husband's family once ruled the principality of Dhrangadhra.

Which one of you is the lady of the house?

Whence came you, sir?

Good jattle one...

Jattle one?

Gentle one. Gentle, gentle.

Gentle.

'They're rehearsing a show of Shakespeare's greatest hits.

'He's been on the curriculum since the school began.

'Quite an act of faith

'in a town where most adults don't speak a word of English.'

-Gentle.

-Mmm.

Good gentle one.

Give me modest assurance if you be the lady of the house?

If we were sitting in Delhi or Mumbai or somewhere,

it would be a more obvious

that you would be doing a Shakespeare play,

because the language would be English.

English being a foreign language is very obvious

when you walk down the street.

They'll expect you to understand Gujarati, or then Hindi,

but never English.

And it will be a strange English that you won't even understand.

What on EARTH possessed you to think of teaching them Shakespeare?

I think this makes them, in fact, step up a notch in life.

I really do believe.

I believe the fact of their being exposed to excellence, you know?

It's not just little children's plays that are boring as hell,

-but these are real things that they do and they enjoy them.

-I know.

The children get it like this. SHE SNAPS FINGERS

You know, when you tell them the complicated plot,

you think it's complicated because you're looking at it as an adult.

But they are completely fresh. "Yes, I understand this story!"

Remember, you're a girl disguised as a boy,

in love with a man who loves her.

You know, I think that if you learn a foreign language,

if you are able to do something wonderful with that language

in the initial stages, you feel easy about it.

The lines have to be clear.

Don't make me stop you.

Don't do all the funny mistakes that we make sometimes.

Long sounds.

"Fool" is a long sound. It's not "full".

You're quite strict, though.

I'm very strict. I'm a harridan!

No, I mean, a lot of directors could learn from you!

-CHILDREN:

-Double, double, toil and trouble!

This is not fire.

This is a lion's claw.

This is fire.

I genuinely enjoy working with the children,

and I think that comes across.

So they believe it, and then they want to do it.

And also, I suppose, you could say in a way you're working with

-the best texts in the English language.

-Absolutely.

So if you're teaching them English...

May as well use that as the paradigm. Absolutely.

Why not?

Which is the word to stress?

-CHILDREN:

-Verb!

-And not the adjective.

O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend

The brightest heaven of invention.

A kingdom for a stage, princes to act

And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!

'By the 1850s, Shakespeare had become an icon for educated Indians.

'A passport to advancement under British rule.

'But to the millions who didn't speak English...'

Then let me see.

'..he remained a closed book.'

Good gentle one, give me modest assurance

if you be the lady of the house.

'That would only change when the plays were translated

'into the native languages of India.

'And there are hundreds of those.

'I've come to Mysore, in the southern state of Karnataka,

'to hear what Indian Shakespeare sounds like.

'I remember performing with my parents in the palace here.

'But today Shakespeare turns up in the most unexpected places.

'Like this high security prison.'

This is extraordinary, this story of playing Shakespeare in a jail.

Are all the guys that do the plays really serious criminals?

Some of the people have done a serious couple of murders.

Homicides. And they are in for them for life.

It is surprising that very hardened criminals

got very much fascinated

by this idea of playing Shakespeare inside a jail.

For I know most of the prison inmates are from the local people.

They are not very educated.

The extraordinary thing is, why Shakespeare?

There are so many great and wonderful writers

that are in India already.

I think Shakespeare's dramas involve transformation of the mind.

It's not just a mere play.

'I've been given special permission to go inside the prison

'and watch the inmates rehearse.

'My guide is actor and director, Hulugappa Kattimani.

'His organisation, called Sankalpa, has pioneered the use of Shakespeare

'as a tool for rehabilitation in prisons like this.'

Many of these men are serving long sentences for serious crimes.

I can't begin to imagine what their life must be like.

But it's a very long way from Stratford-on-Avon.

HE SPEAKS KANNADA

'I've joined Mr Kattimani's wife and daughter

'to watch a rehearsal of King Lear,

'translated into the local language, called Kannada.'

HE SPEAKS KANNADA

Lear is an Everest of a role,

so it's no surprise that Ganesh is finding it tough.

Before he was locked up 10 years ago for murder,

he'd never acted in his life.

TRANSLATION: Remember where Lear is. He's braving the rain and storm.

He isn't out there sipping tea with a full stomach, feeling relaxed.

You can't deliver punchy dialogue sitting like this.

His stomach is empty.

He has to feel what the character is feeling.

King Lear is in a lot of conflicting emotions.

So he has to feel that.

In the midday heat of Mysore,

it's hard to imagine your character in a storm on a blasted heath.

THEY SCREAM AND LAUGH

That's unconventional!

But Mr Kattimani knows his actors.

Hey!

It is not only acting Shakespeare lines.

He learns how to live. How to respect together.

-How to, um...

-Interact?

Interact.

But also it seems that they're learning not to be alone.

They all react together, they concentrate together.

-Totally one unit.

-Yes, yes.

And the energy from that is absolutely overwhelming.

TRADITIONAL MUSIC PLAYS

DRUM BEATS

-TRANSLATION:

-I had no idea about Shakespeare before.

But Mr Kattimani used to tell us about him and his great plays.

He used to say each and every letter in the lines in this play

were so profound that you don't have to do anything

except give proper meaning to the words.

And the play will get its message across.

My life before was very difficult.

I used to get angry, suddenly.

I'd lose my temper over anything and get into fights.

Now, I'm affectionate and peaceful with people.

Since joining the play, I've become a new person.

Oh, my, can you see?

This is the gentleman who's playing King Lear.

Ganesh! What a transformation!

I don't really remember recently being moved quite so much

by the absolute honesty and the raw emotion

and, quite frankly, brilliant acting,

by a guy in for murder. No acting experience.

And it really puts a lot of us pretentious thespians to shame,

quite frankly,

because he really had in some way

developed into that person who was in that anguish.

To be able to convey the words, the emotion, surrounded by his inmates.

I don't think I'll ever get over it.

I think that was pure theatre.

Translation made Shakespeare accessible

to millions of ordinary Indians across the subcontinent.

A Bengali version of The Merchant of Venice

started the ball rolling in 1852.

Other favourites included Othello, Macbeth, and The Comedy of Errors.

Some versions stayed true to the original.

Others relocated the action to Indian settings

and played fast and loose with character and plot.

No crime in that, when you remember

what liberties Shakespeare took with his sources.

And that wasn't the only common ground

he shared with India's home-grown storytellers.

To find out more about those connections,

I'm heading hundreds of miles further south

into the rural heart of India.

CAR HORNS BEEP

So here we are, in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

Very busy, very wonderful.

I'm travelling with a tiny little unit,

unlike the enormous number of people that I used to travel with.

We used to actually travel on buses like this.

Sometimes 25 or 30 people at a time,

and then we would just pile all the luggage,

four show's worth of stuff, onto the roof,

and off we would go for sometimes 10 or 12 hours through the night.

I'm travelling in a more civilised fashion now.

I'm on my way to the village of Heggodu,

in the southern State of Karnataka.

We never came here with Shakespeareana,

although I rather wish we had.

Around the same time that we were touring India,

this tiny village gave birth to a revolutionary organisation

called Ninasam, which put it firmly on India's cultural map.

Ninasam is founded on the belief

that great art belongs to everyone,

the same philosophy that inspired my father's work.

Every year they stage a Shakespeare production

performed by the villagers here,

in Heggodu's very impressive theatre.

CHEERING

-(Can I sit here?)

-Yes, please.

-They're rehearsing?

-Yeah.

Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale.

The Kannada version is called Shishira Vasantha.

Shishira is winter, and Vasantha is spring.

So we have slightly changed the name, keeping the spirit of it.

'It was Akshara's father who dreamed up

'this extraordinary grassroots movement.'

The actors today that we were seeing,

-they're not professionals, are they?

-This is the real connection

with the community,

because these are all people who live around

and their families come here as the audience.

-The integral society?

-Yeah.

And for any new play that we do, we will have two full houses definitely.

400 plus 400. 1,000 people will watch it.

Is there ever any question?

Do they say to you, "Why are you doing Shakespeare?"

No, actually, they don't care whether it is Shakespeare or somebody else.

They would care for what they get from the show.

In India, everything should have nava rasa, the nine basic emotions.

I mean, that is the wholeness of any work of art.

The basic nine emotions are the heroic, the pathetic,

the comic...and adbhutam is the wonder.

So these are some of the elements

which usually the Indian audience

would think should be there in all works of art.

So therefore, because Shakespeare contains

all these diverse emotions within one play,

Indians would think that Shakespeare is an Indian playwright.

He works for the Indian sensibility.

There's a legend that Shakespeare was born in south India

and his original name was Shishupa Araya.

And then he went to England, Christianised et cetera,

and became Shakespeare.

Mmm, there's something in it!

Yeah, there's something in it,

and there's something metaphorical in it,

and there is at least some kind of an aspiration in it.

Where people of south India want to appropriate Shakespeare as their own.

Shakespeare in that way is a kind of bridge between two cultures.

Through translation and adaptation,

Shakespeare entered the bloodstream of India.

But soon there were new heroes to follow.

The rise of nationalism in the '20s and '30s

returned the spotlight to Indian culture.

As independence approached,

Shakespeare's days in the Indian sun looked numbered.

My parents couldn't have picked a worse time

to launch their company, Shakespeareana.

They'd dreamed of returning,

ever since their wartime performances with ENSA,

and sailed in high spirits,

rehearsing The Merchant of Venice during the long voyage.

But when they finally docked in Bombay,

they found a land in turmoil.

ANNOUNCER: India, gripped by conflict and suspense, as this vast country

of almost 400 million people strives to find a solution to its problems.

Offered freedom by British Prime Minister Attlee in March,

a divided India faces its complex destiny.

This was the backdrop to Shakespeareana's first tour,

launched in January 1947, just seven months before independence.

ANNOUNCER: As meeting followed meeting,

the Muslims insisted on their demand for their own separate state

and complete independence from the Hindu majority.

'The move to partition India and create a new state, Pakistan,

'sparked mass violence between Hindus and Muslims.

'We avoided the worst of the trouble and toured for a year.

'But then a bad situation turned worse.

'When Gandhi was assassinated in January 1948,

'my parents decided reluctantly it was too dangerous to continue.

'We set sail for England, and it would be 5 years before we returned.

'By then, the turmoil had subsided and we ended up staying for years.'

I recognise what's going on!

-A lot of actors getting ready for a show!

-SHE LAUGHS

'In Delhi, I've come to see a production

'of a Midsummer Night's Dream for school children.

'I'm thrilled to discover that this company was originally

'inspired by Shakespeareana.'

I used to do this every day of my life in a new space,

-doing exactly what you're doing!

-SHE LAUGHS

We had black curtains, a few props,

many, many, many costumes, as we had 12 or 15 plays.

And do you have the same company that stays together?

More or less.

We picked up a tea planter once...carry on, carry on,

because I know you've got a show...and we did this show,

and he fell in love with the company.

We went back next year and he said,

"I'm giving up tea planting. I'm going to join your company."

And he did. He was rather good.

Yeah?

-Not VERY good.

-SHE LAUGHS

-Not very good, but...

-Tolerable.

-Tolerable, yeah!

I made my very first stage appearance in The Dream,

during our first turbulent tour. I was 9 months old.

Do not reprehend. Pardon us, and we will mend.

'After we returned to India in 1953, I graduated to speaking roles.'

O, why rebuke you him that loves you so?

Lay breath so bitter on your bitter foe.

'And settled into the nomadic lifestyle

'that would shape the rest of my childhood.

'I rarely studied at the same school for more than a few weeks.

'But what was fun for a child must have been hard slog for my parents.

'An endless succession of late nights,

'early mornings and non-stop travel,

'with no guarantee of a booking to pay the bills.

'Although their utter dedication was sometimes rewarded

'by moments of absolute wonder.'

I think of the numerous places we've visited in India,

this must be the most spectacular.

We were guests, can you believe it, of the royal family.

And we actually performed, I think,

once inside and then a couple of times on the terrace.

I can hardly actually believe that I have those memories

because they're probably the most magical

of all the memories that I have as a child in India.

'During the Raj, Udaipur was a princely state,

'governed by the local royal family under licence from the British.

'After independence, power passed to the new Indian Government,

'although the family still enjoys a ceremonial role.

'I have an invitation to meet the current king,

'or Maharana as he's known.

'And I'm travelling to the palace in great style.'

It's sort of spooky that my parents, I remember,

when I was very little,

they went in splendour to the palace from the railway station.

Whereas the rest of the company went on rickshaws,

because obviously there were hundreds of us, well, 14.

And we couldn't all...so there was this incredible procession

of this amazing Rolls-Royce for my parents driving in State,

and then the rest of the lot in the chicken class behind.

'They still enjoy some pomp and circumstance in Udaipur.

'Just as they did when Shakespeareana came to play.'

I don't actually remember whether it was your father

or your grandfather when my parents came here.

No, you first came here during my grandfather's time in the early '50s.

That is when your father had just started

-to put Shakespeareana together.

-Yes.

In fact, I remember him playing Shylock,

and he made it look as if he was

not the villain but the hero.

Which I think very few people can carry off.

And also, as far as I can remember going back,

the fashion was to play, then, Shylock as a villain.

A definite villain.

The bad...and he actually didn't believe that.

Well, he was way ahead of his time

to have thought of doing something like this.

It just goes to show his passion for Shakespeare.

He had two passions.

-One was Shakespeare, and the other was India.

-Any reasoning?

Did he give you any reasoning for that?

I don't really know why, but he just said,

"This is something that the audiences in India respond to,"

in a way that he found wasn't available to him.

So I guess it was quite a selfish thing.

He wanted that audience.

I think you're being harsh.

I think it was a passion.

It was this great love, probably in a very juvenile way,

probably not at his level.

But at the same time, his passion for Shakespeare

and his passion for India came together rather well.

And then why did he discontinue?

He didn't discontinue.

Basically what happened is that Jennifer got married,

and I went to England,

and what happened was that everything changed.

If I put it in perspective, historical perspective,

India became independent in '47.

The states had been merged.

The union of India, the republic of India had come.

And it was a transition at that time, and a lot of us,

including Grandfather,

were trying to get to terms with the new way of life.

As India grew into independence, you might have thought

Shakespeare was destined to end up like the Maharajah's Rolls.

A splendid survivor of a vanished world.

Indians were reconnecting with their own traditions,

undervalued for so long by the British.

By the 1960s, Shakespeare Wallah portrayed my father's character

as a dinosaur of the Raj, raging against the dying of the light.

They always laughed at all the jokes, cried at the right places.

The most wonderful audience in the world.

They're still the same people.

Oh, no, they're not, Carla.

They've changed, and we've changed too.

I've grown old and sour.

Actually he didn't feel like that at all.

He never lost his faith in his mission.

Or in his belief that Shakespeare's plays,

performed with integrity and love, speak to any audience.

You simply have to follow Hamlet's advice to the players.

Speak the speech, I pray you,

as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue.

But if you mouth it, as many of your players do,

I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines.

'My father's passion and sheer bloody-mindedness

'kept Shakespeareana's show on the road well into the 1970s.

'A testament to his unswerving conviction

'that Shakespeare could never be old-fashioned,

'because he was timeless, and therefore, endlessly modern.

'That conviction didn't always make for an easy life

'for him or the rest of the family.

'But I love him for having it.'

What a wonderful backdrop!

You can't really beat that in any theatre!

DRUMS BEAT

My father believed Shakespeare and India were a natural fit.

But for some Indian artists, the relationship's more complicated.

The man in the mask is Arjun Raina.

He's a master of Kathakali, the stylized dance theatre from Kerala.

Traditionally, Kathakali tells stories from Indian mythology.

Arjun's work plunders Shakespeare instead.

-If you give me a Shakespearean sentence...

-All right. To be...

Yes. To...live.

To be.

..or...

-Or.

-..not...

-Not.

-..not to be.

He's already doing, "That is the question,"

because you know the next bit!

Well, there isn't a single line that I don't know!

I can tell! I can tell!

This is a scene from Arjun's adaptation of Othello,

Shakespeare's tragedy about a black hero

living in a white man's world.

Arjun sees parallels between Othello's story

and the identity crisis faced by many Indians

as they square up to the colonial past.

What did British colonisation do?

It absolutely cut a whole people from the roots of their culture.

Absolutely, yeah.

And it did it in very, very cunning, very brilliant ways.

And one of the offerings of that was the great work of Shakespeare.

So if you think that people love Shakespeare

and I love Shakespeare,

that's only partially the truth. The truth is, you hate it also.

DRUMS BEAT

To dramatise that love-hate relationship,

Arjun tears up the script.

In the original play, Othello kills his wife, Desdemona,

because he thinks she's had an affair.

This time round, husband and wife survive.

It's the treacherous Iago who ends up dead.

It's like hijacking an aeroplane.

It always gets you attention.

-So the reason why...

-Yes, yes!

..why I have done Shakespeare is

I'm not so interested in Shakespeare and your world.

But I was very passionately interested in making my world

and my beauty and my art be present in my world.

Arjun's Kathakali take on Othello has another consequence too.

For centuries, the lead role was usually played

by a white actor in black make-up,

whether it was my father or Lord Olivier.

It is the cause,

It is the cause, my soul.

'But in Kathakali, everyone wears a mask.'

I'm going to have a go at a rather old Desdemona.

I think at my age the only way to do it,

having played it once before, is in a mask.

HE SPEAKS HINDI

Iago is making me up.

This is not like it is in Elizabeth Arden, I can tell you.

-RECORDING:

-Justice to break a sword.

'I played some eccentric venues during my time with Shakespeareana,

'but Arjun's rooftop theatre is up there with the best of them.

'At least in his version of the play,

'Desdemona lives to fight another day.'

-RECORDING:

-She wakes!

DRUMS RATTLE

Lady Desdemona not being murdered?

I like this! HE LAUGHS

Lady Desdemona getting up?

Thank you.

-Not easy!

-HE LAUGHS

Lady Desdemona, free.

Iago, dead.

Thank you! Thank you very much!

Thank you!

'Arjun hijacks Shakespeare to make his point.

'But others stuck to the script to make their voice heard.

'I've returned to Kolkata to meet theatre expert, Bishnupriya Dutt.

'Her father, Utpal Dutt,

'was one of India's most celebrated and controversial performers

-'before his death in 1993.'

-Come in!

This is their house, where my parents stayed.

Oh, oh, my goodness! Look, there he is!

Othello.

'Utpal started his career with Shakespeareana.'

-He was very young and he played...

-He was in college.

-He was in college?

-First year college, yes.

And I was little, and I remember him

being this charismatic figure that I absolutely worshipped.

He was funny, and he was actually also quite argumentative

about things that were going on.

He's written about it many times,

that it was not really reading Marx and Engels

which initiated him into his left ideological belief,

but actually through Shakespeare.

That was his first entry point.

'After he left my parents, Utpal formed his own company,

'inspired by his Marxist beliefs.'

I remember my father saying, "He's written these things

"and he's running this theatre," and he was very proud of him.

But he was also concerned that he kept being put in jail

because of his beliefs.

He didn't care. He was just going to do it anyway.

'In 1975, India was hit by political crisis.

'Prime Minister Indira Ghandi announced a state of emergency,

'ruling by decree for nearly two years.

'Utpal was outraged, but censorship made it difficult

'to stage a contemporary play which voiced his dissent.

'So he turned instead to Shakespeare's tragedy

'about another ruler who seizes power by force.'

So now this is a programme, isn't it, of Macbeth?

And this is interesting because it's written here, "Alas, poor country.

"Almost afraid to know itself.

"It cannot be called our mother."

India is always called 'Mother'.

"But our grave, where nothing

"but who knows nothing is once seen to smile."

It's extraordinarily fitting.

That Shakespeare should still be so powerfully available

to emotional, political translation of any kind all over the world.

But it seems especially in India.

Around the time Utpal was battling the government,

my parents moved back to England, where I'd been living for a decade.

They were semi-retired,

but still returned regularly to India to perform.

Just the two of them together now,

playing favourite scenes and monologues.

The only member of the Kendal clan still living permanently in India

was my sister, Jennifer.

The final leg of my journey brings me to Mumbai

on the shores of the Indian Ocean.

A city which still has strong family connections.

I've come to Prithvi Theatre, the family theatre,

to meet my family.

And unfortunately, they are renovating at the moment,

but we're going to go in and see what's what.

The Prithvi Theatre was built by my big sister, Jennifer,

and her husband, Shashi Kapoor.

This is Jennifer, my sister. Your mother.

Is there Shashi anywhere?

-Yes, there, there.

-Oh, my goodness!

Now this is it. This is Othello.

This is Shashi.

'Shashi comes from one of India's

'most distinguished theatrical families.'

What would he be playing? Cassio?

He's obviously playing Cassio.

'As a 19 year-old, he acted with Shakespeareana,

'married my sister,

'and then went on to become one of India's biggest movie stars.

'Jennifer died far too young nearly 20 years ago.

'But she'd be so proud to see her children, my niece and nephew,

'keep the family traditions alive.'

Have we done Shakespeare here?

-Yes.

-Yes.

-Oh, lots.

In English, in Hindi, in everything.

Some way, Shakespeare keeps coming back in.

And I think one of the reasons Shakespeare works

-is it's like our epics.

-Yes.

-The stories are magnificent.

-Huge.

I mean, all the things that we like culturally in India

in stories, is emotion. The relationships and emotion.

-Family relationships.

-The moral as well.

And actually he had a knack, and it's these emotions that work,

because we're very emotional and we like things larger than life.

On the other hand, it's totally honest.

It's not melodrama.

There isn't a second of melodrama.

No, it's not artificial.

It's not artificial. It's... ..it's life...

-But it's sort of HUGE life!

-But it's real.

It's what you can identify with.

That's why it gets adapted, and that's why it's both ways.

You've had so many films that have been made based on Shakespeare.

I'm going to find out more about how Shakespeare

made it big in Indian movies.

And I'm in the right place.

Mumbai is the town where Bollywood was born.

This is the famous Chor Bazaar, which translated is Thieves' Market.

You can get anything you want, or you're supposed to be able to.

And I'm after something very special.

If I don't get run over first!

-Hello!

-Hello, hello!

-Where are you from?

-I'm from England.

Besides adapting entire plays, Indian movie makers

have never been too proud to beg, borrow or steal

characters, plot devices or individual scenes from Shakespeare

to spice up their own stories.

Bollywood Bazaar! This is it!

OK, so I have a list of old films.

One is Chori Chori, then there's Junglee.

Have you got anything on these?

Chori Chori, yes. I have got the poster of Chori Chori.

-You have? Can I see?

-Yes, definitely.

-Oh, there we go!

-Raj Kapoor and Nargis.

-Very famous. Amazing.

-Yeah, very famous couple.

So what was the story that you understand of it?

She had played a very strong role in this movie, Nargis.

She is very brave and very strong.

-So she's not the obedient woman.

-Exactly.

-She is the disobedient woman.

-Yeah, yeah, yeah. HE LAUGHS

And then she decides who she wants to marry.

Yeah, exactly, madam.

A little bit like The Taming of the Shrew, which is Shakespeare.

-Exactly, yeah. Oh, OK.

-Do you think?

OK, I've got another one. Uran Khatola.

-I have the Uran Khatola poster, yes.

-You have it? You are amazing!

So this is Dilip?

Yeah, that's Dilip Kumar. And this is Nimmi.

There is one very funny story in this movie.

The heroine, you know,

she is to dress like a man to impress Dilip Kumar in this movie.

And in the end, what happens?

In the end, Dilip Kumar gets impressed, so they fall in love.

He falls in love with a boy, but realises it's a girl.

-Exactly, exactly.

-That sounds a little bit like Twelfth Night.

And do you think they knew that it was coming from Shakespeare, or not?

-Maybe not.

-Maybe not. Yeah, yeah!

It doesn't matter. It's here.

And I notice something else up there, looking down on us.

-Yeah, yeah, yeah!

-I cannot believe this!

There's a bust of Shakespeare looking down from heaven.

He's watching us do this.

'And I wonder what he would have made of this.'

BOLLYWOOD MUSIC PLAYS.

It looks like classic Bollywood.

But it's 100% Shakespeare too.

This is a scene from Omkara, a modern day version of Othello,

set in the remote wilds of India.

It's one of a pair of Shakespeare movies

made by director, Vishal Bhardwaj.

I've come to the Eros cinema.

When I was growing up in India, this was a regular haunt of mine.

A wonderful place to watch films.

PROJECTOR WHIRRS

Before Othello, Bhardwaj adapted Macbeth,

moving Shakespeare's Scottish play to the Mumbai underworld.

His hero isn't a nobleman, but a gangster called Maqbool.

This is the moment when he kills his boss.

His stories are timeless and his basic conflicts

deal with the basic human emotions.

It's the jealousy, greed,

power, love, which is very easily identifiable

by any caste, any creed.

So I think that's the reason

I can adapt Shakespeare to any period of my country.

DRAMATIC MUSIC

Any period and any place.

When he turned his attention to Othello,

he relocated the tragedy to a landscape he knew well.

I placed it in North India, where I come from.

And it's like...you know, the Wild, Wild West.

So I thought that to see those kind of characters

in the mainstream Indian cinema,

with the backing of such a strong playwright,

can be a deadly cocktail.

The basic story I thought, in Othello, to me,

was a black man who has low self-esteem.

So I had to look for the parallel of the Moor.

And in that I found a low caste or a half-caste Brahmin.

Brahmin is a very upper caste in India.

But he is the mix of a Brahmin and a low caste lady.

So he is regarded, he is respected,

but he is always taken as a half-caste.

BOLLYWOOD MUSIC

Because I didn't want to alienate myself from the mainstream,

I had to have songs.

The only thing is, the songs have to be justified.

And I always have problems with Bollywood films,

that when the song comes, the story stops.

So I try to weave the songs in such a manner that the story keeps moving.

It should not stop.

So if you see that she's dancing on stage

and Iago is also dancing down,

and Cassio's drunk, so they creates some scene.

And I think there's a song in Shakespeare's Othello also.

After they get drunk, they sing a song.

So it's not just me. I think also Shakespeare used songs.

'It's quite a journey from those early expat shows

'to Bollywood Shakespeare.

'Along the way he's played many parts.

'He's been adapted, translated, plundered and hijacked.

'He's been a weapon of Empire and a voice of freedom.

'I'm proud of my family's role in his Indian adventure.

'And delighted to discover that it's not over yet.

'But my journey's nearly done,

'and there's just one more person to meet.

'Naseeruddin Shah is one of India's biggest movie stars.

'He's acted in over 100 films, including Omkara and Maqbool.'

-SHE LAUGHS

-You have a fan!

'I came to talk about his work,

'but just when you think you have it sussed,

'India has a funny habit of surprising you.'

Now you did some films...

-Based on Shakespeare.

-..on Shakespeare.

Before I go into that, Felicity,

I want to point out something.

Whenever I was asked, "Who's your favourite actor?"

I'd say, "Mr Kendal."

And I'd seen Lord Olivier,

I'd seen Mr Brando, I'd seen Mr Gielgud on movies.

They never mesmerised me the way he did. I saw their last performance.

I think it was just before Mrs Kendal fell ill.

And I said, "Sir, I have to ask you one thing.

"Do you ever feel any sense of regret

"that you didn't stay on in England?

"Because you're as great as any of those great actors I've seen.

"Don't you feel you could have stayed on

"and become a Knight and Lord and so on?

"Living in a mansion in London?"

And he said, "I have no sense of regret, because I'm not an actor.

"I'm a missionary.

"And my mission is to spread Shakespeare."

And I have never seen such a statement of such total clarity

made by two people at the end of their lives.

Saying it with such complete conviction

and satisfied in every way.

And it's going to be an inspiration that will last me as long as I live.

And I try to tell the story of Shakespeare to anybody that I can.

That's the greatest thing, is to inspire somebody else,

-I think, probably.

-Absolutely.

-Amazing.

When Shakespeareana came on, he'd recite this marvellous poem.

I don't remember it in its entirety now, but it went something like,

"When Shakespeare played, the stage was bare.

"Of castle, something, font or stair.

"Two supers made the rebel rout.

"Two broadswords fought the battle out.

"The throne of Denmark was a chair...

-A chair!

-"..when Shakespeare played.

"Upon his stage without thrust prow, his actors came..."

As we come forward now to be as our heroes, bravely, nothing tame.

No shrinking back behind a picture frame. No coloured scene...

"..no coloured scene emblazons.

"When Shakespeare played, there was heard..."

-THE KENDALS:

-..a high, unclouded summer of the word.

"..a high, unclouded summer of the word."

My mother died in England 20 years ago.

After my father followed her six years later,

we scattered his ashes on the waters of the Indian Ocean.

What an extraordinary passage back to India I've had.

I was brought here by my father as a little girl.

This is where we took his ashes out to sea, from the gateway of India.

I don't know why, we had a bagpiper with a turban and a kilt,

who played rather badly, bless him.

And we went to the bow of the boat, the wind was blowing,

and we gave him to the sea.

And the wind was so strong, it blew him back in our faces.

-SHE LAUGHS

-Which was a sort of wonderful end!

He absolutely adored India, it was his home, and loved Shakespeare.

Two loves of his life, apart from my mother.

And he tried to spread that on his journeys over the years.

And he, I suppose...

..made me conscious, as he did many other people,

that Shakespeare was such a special and available writer.

And I think it would make him so happy to know

that, in some small way, he had influenced

the love of Shakespeare

that is still so strong in this magical country.

He'd be very proud.

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