Great arrangement, guys

Tarum Mohanbhai and Rajeev Varma use their background to first-rate effect.

Standing outside the Maidment Theatre with their bags slung over their shoulders, Rajeev Varma and Tarun Mohanbhai look like two students taking a break between lectures.

They are not. They are Those Indian Guys who, over the past four years, have quietly gone about becoming one of the country's most successful touring theatre companies, performing more than 130 shows to audiences in four countries.

Varma and Mohanbhai, who two years ago won the NZ International Comedy Festival's best local act, are back in their hometown of Auckland this month to reprise their first show, D'Arranged Marriage.

It has played to sellout audiences in New Zealand, Australia, Malaysia and South Africa and has spawned a prequel, From India with Love, which they also tour.

D'Arranged Marriage is about Sanjay, who spends most of his life avoiding his nagging family's talk of marriage. When he gives in to demands to meet the girl, he finds his prospective bride really is "the one" but she has eyes for another.

Sanjay is caught in a love triangle where friends and relatives have an opinion and want to help.

Varma and Mohanbhai have achieved success partly by mining their own experiences as Indian New Zealanders to create stories which have universal appeal and recognisable characters.

But although the stories are comedies, the laughs are not at the expense of the Indian community.

"We took our culture and made it a strength instead of a weakness," says Varma, who admits there were times when, as an Indian actor, it was a struggle to find work. "But we walked a fine line between laughing with and at our community.

"We stuck to the truth of situations we've been in and seen and took those stories on to the stage."

They also owe their success to their working style, initially managing without a director. And they alternate: a night on-stage and the next night off-stage working the slide projector and taking notes on what needs to be refined. They found that in Malaysia and South Africa, for example, the Maori-best-friend character was not recognisable, so he was replaced with an Indian cousin.

They have added hand puppets, slides and digital film projection to explore themes of cultural clashes and stereotypes, generation-gap conflict, immigration, love, loss, family, friendships and ambition.

Because these cut across cultural and geographical boundaries, they have found it relatively simple to take the show around the world. Next month they are off to Singapore and they hope to perform in India and the United States.

Although D'Arranged Marriage is a one-person show, having two performers means touring never gets boring and there is always someone to bounce new ideas off. It also means they can perform the show simultaneously in Wellington and Auckland. This, they say, was one of their greatest achievements. Another thrill was getting a letter from the New Zealand consulate in Malaysia congratulating them on being such fine ambassadors for their country.

And they smile about the fact that they have had elderly Indian women in the audience who had never been to the theatre before.

As well as continually refining D'Arranged Marriage, they have written a prequel.

The parents in their first show were popular and, they figured, had their own tales to tell - so they wrote From India with Love.

"We had never been on stage before at the same time so we thought it would be fun to do," Mohanbhai says. From India with Love is set in a small Indian village in the 1950s. It tells the story of Manhur and Pushpa, who meet, fall in love and decide to travel to New Zealand to make their fortune and help their families.

But getting from one side of the world to the other isn't plain sailing and there is plenty to get through before they achieve their dream of setting up a fruit and vegetable shop in Pukekohe.

This is a bigger production with both performers on stage. It is directed by fellow comedian and Herald columnist Te Radar and includes Bollywood-style film footage featuring guest appearances from actor/writer friends who include Oscar Kightley and Taungaroa Emile.

* What: D'Arranged Marriage
* Where and when: Maidment Theatre, Sep 19-23; Orewa Centrestage Theatre, Sep 30