Dubai : For a long time American University in Dubai (AUD) alumnus Gautam Goenka had wanted to produce the play Strangers on a Train and now he's finally gotten around to doing just that.
The play, which is an adaptation of the book with the same name, has also been made into a movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The community theatre group based in Dubai, Backstage, and American University in Dubai's (AUD) drama club, The Troupe, collaborated together to produce the play. They had been rehearsing for days on end before the opening date on May 28.
Goenka, who is now the director of the play and president of Backstage, says the audience gets to see "some of the Dubai residents who are not professional actors but put on a great show". He also believes that the audience gets to experience something they don't come across on a daily basis.
About the play
The play, as the title suggests, is a thriller about two strangers who meet on a train. While the two gentlemen start up a conversation, they eventually get intoxicated and begin to realise that there's one irritating person in their lives they want to get rid of. The two-act play, which translates a little over two hours, unravels murders and how they impact the characters.
Lead actors
The lead actors are played by an IT consultant, Bryan Mackenzie, and a BITS-Pilani graduate, Rohit Prakash.
Mackenzie plays the role of Charles Bruno, a "mummy's boy" who has an inability to form relationships with normal people. However, he has the ability to manipulate people, "get under their skin" and find ways to make them do what he wants. Whereas Prakash plays Guy Haines, the other stranger, who is an architect going through a rough time and gets into something he was forced to do.
Mackenzie, who has been acting on and off for at least 25 years on, finds his character interesting because there's a lot of "shade and colour" in his character.
Prakash, who has 12 years of theatre experience so far, believes that Guy Haines has been one of his most difficult characters to play. What has drawn him to the play is the way it has been written, as it can be produced at "any point in time" and "it really doesn't bound you by its language", he explained.
Another member of the cast is 28-year-old Mohammad Al Sudairy.
The Saudi Arabia national is a visual communications major in his last semester at AUD. He started acting at the age of nine and so far has been in 17 plays in Saudi Arabia, UAE and the United States.
