The first time a play is staged, it is born, tentatively testing its limbs under the stage lights. With each performance, it grows, fed by applause and sharpened by suggestion. Over several shows, it gathers skin, memory, and even instinct.
When Tiruchiyai Meeta Sundarapandiyan by Karpanai Kudhirai first opened in Chennai two years ago, its writer-director, Vedarun Rajkumar, introduced it as an “attempted comedy”. But somewhere between its premiere and this show, something shifted, and it grew.
The title, of course, carries history. It knowingly echoes the 1978 MGR classic Madhuraiyai Meetta Sundharapandiyan, where a king wages war to reclaim Madurai. Here, a cab driver named Sundarapandiyan is determined to get to Tiruchy. The grandeur is reduced. The stakes appear smaller. But the emotional terrain is not.
In the film, Sundharapandiyan reclaims a kingdom. In this play, he drives a taxi. Is this a deliberate reimagining of heroism in smaller, everyday acts?
“Absolutely,” Vedarun says. “The reference to Madhuraiyai Meetta Sundharapandiyan goes beyond nostalgia. In the classic film, Sundharapandiyan is a larger-than-life hero who saves kingdoms and restores political order. Our play echoes that idea but brings it down to a more intimate scale. Here, Sundarapandiyan ‘saves’ Tiruchy — not through epic battles, but through small, unexpected acts of kindness that matter in everyday life. In that sense, the allusion allows us to contrast the grandeur of old cinematic heroism with the quieter, human victories that define contemporary stories.”
“The association to the film is quite deliberate,” Vedarun says. “The protagonist of our play has a deep fondness for Tamil film songs of the 1970s, especially those sung by TM Soundararajan. Tiruchiyai Meeta Sundarapandiyan also shortens to TMS, which helped us create an intentional old school flavour through the title itself.”
But if the film was about kingdoms and conquest, this play is about interiors. Emotional ones.
Set mostly in a taxi named Karthiga, almost everyone in this plot is running away from something, and they all pile into her. Staging the story inside a car was no accident. The taxi becomes a Foucauldian heterotopia, a liminal space outside routine structures where confessions spill. “The taxi ride functions as a metaphor in different ways for different characters,” Vedarun says. “For one, it represents escape. For another, it becomes a space for confronting oneself. The play, ultimately, is about facing one’s inner truths.”
Over multiple shows, the script has remained structurally consistent. The staging has not undergone dramatic reinvention. Yet the play today is not the same one that opened two years ago.
“When we first staged the play, it was the first full-length production for several members of the cast,” Vedarun reflects. “Now the actors have gained considerable experience. Their craft has matured, and that growth reflects in their performances today, bringing new depth and nuance to the same characters.”
Rajbharath, who plays the titular role of a taxi driver, agrees. “When you are boarding his cab, that cab is his home,” Rajbharath says. “He is welcoming everyone home and he is the host there.” Over time, Rajbharath’s own understanding of that hospitality has deepened.
“Every time I revisit a character, I love to try different things and experiment. I always make sure I improvise with my lines. As we grow, we are learning more about life and more about ourselves. That reflects in the performances.”
His understanding of the whole of the character, too, has deepened. “It may not be a deeper psychological layer,” he explains, “but definitely something new, a small quirk or a different perspective on the same lines.” With every restaging, familiar moments reveal fresh shades, allowing the character to stay alive and evolve.
It is not just the protagonist who has grown. Harini, who plays the enigmatic Maharani, describes her character with amused affection. “Maharani is an interesting name in a play about ordinary people in a dark room,” she says. “I like to think Maharani might not even be her real name. She has named herself Maharani because she really feels like one. She plays by her own rules. She does not shrink herself to fit into someone else’s comfort zone. So she really is a Maharani, at least to herself.”
When the play first opened, she saw her character more bluntly. “I used to think of Maharani as a villain, someone with no morals. But then I started to understand her more. The way she talks about politics, how chill she is while navigating life, it is amusing to me.” In that shift lies the heart of restaging.
“Everyone is getting beaten up emotionally in this play,” she reflects. “All our energy goes into just surviving. So how can we make that survival more beautiful? How can we see life with a different perspective? How can we find beauty in the people around us? And of course, how do we take everything in a positive, chill, comical way? That is what I want people to take away.” The more the cast revisits the script, the more these questions sharpen.
There is a moment in the play when Sundarapandiyan recounts swallowing a one rupee coin as a child. His grandmother makes him spit it out and tells him, “In life, we often swallow such coins by mistake. If we do not spit them out, they will spoil our happiness.”
If the premiere tested humour, this show celebrates endurance. In a city where sustaining live theatre is itself a challenge, reaching that milestone matters. “It may seem small,” Vedarun admits. “But in today’s context, staging 25 ticketed live theatre performances in Chennai feels like a meaningful achievement. We felt it was only fitting to return to the play that started it all for us, a way of celebrating the journey of Karpanai Kudhirai over the past two years and everything we have learned along the way.”
Perhaps that is what reclaiming Tiruchy truly means in this version of the story. Not conquest. Not spectacle. But return. Return to a script that now feels lived in. Return to characters who have softened and sharpened with time. Return to an audience that is no longer encountering them for the first time, but meeting them again.
Theatre is not static, like no art form ever is. As a living, evolving organism, it breathes differently with each production. It ages with its actors. It gathers memory, not only with the original troupe that first staged it, but also with every new company that reimagines it in their own way.
So when that reimagining becomes radical — when someone stages the play in a completely different style or genre, allowing this organism to thrive and evolve further — it opens up new possibilities rather than anxieties.
“I think it would definitely excite me,” Vedarun says. “In fact, I’m currently working on a fantasy reinterpretation of the same script, simply to explore new nuances within the story. I’m not sure if it will ever be staged. At the moment, I’m doing it purely for the joy of experimentation. More broadly, I believe genre is really just packaging; any story can be told through any genre if the core emotions remain true. Because of that, I’m always open to reinterpretations and new ways of looking at the same material.”
Email: shivani@newindianexpress.com
X: @ShivaniIllakiya
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