Play name
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
By Deborah Moggach
Director
Allan Osborne
afosborne50@gmail.com (This email address was corrected at 9:33am 31.8.26)
Playing dates
Thursday 6 May to Saturday 15 May (first Thursday is a private Charity show; not Sunday 9 May; matinee Saturday 8 May)
Get-in and Strike
18 April; 16 May
Venue
BLT Main House
Audition
1:00pm Sunday 10 January 2027
About the play
When a group of British retirees swap familiar routines for retirement home in India, a new adventure begins. In a crumbling hotel, unexpected friendships grow and new relationships blossom. Is this the chance to bloom again? Warm, funny and full of heart, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel proves life’s greatest adventures don’t always happen when you’re young.
Time
My production is set in the present day, as specified by the playwright. Moggach deliberately updated her original story for the stage, including references to Zoom, social media and unreliable internet, rather than treating it as a period piece.
That contemporary setting is useful dramatically: these aren’t people looking nostalgically backwards. They are older people being forced to confront what they are going to do now, with the life they still have.
Location
The play begins briefly in India at Mr Kapoor’s funeral, then moves to Heathrow Airport, before the principal action settles at The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel in Bangalore/Bengaluru, India. The hotel is an old, seriously dilapidated Raj-era building with a garden, veranda and office, sitting as a relatively peaceful oasis amid the noise, heat and activity of the city.
Most importantly from a production perspective, I want the hotel to provide the principal set, while the world beyond it will be evoked through sound, music, lighting and atmosphere.
Style and Genre
Feel-good comedy-drama
Characters
The published script has 14 named roles: 8 women and 6 men. These are playing ages rather than necessarily the actors’ actual ages.
EVELYN 60’s/70’s A polite, Home Counties widow. Initially rather conventional and contained, but intelligent and receptive to change. There is real emotional life underneath the reserve, and India gives her an opportunity to rediscover herself.
DOUGLAS Early 60’s/70’s A retired teacher and Jean’s husband. Pleasant, amiable and fundamentally decent. More open to India and new experiences than his wife, and increasingly aware that there may still be another chapter available to him.
MADGE 60’s/70’s Former fashion-business owner. Glamorous, brassy, sexy, somewhat vulgar and great fun. She refuses to become invisible simply because she is older. A terrific comic character who also needs humanity underneath the flamboyance.
DOROTHY 60’s/70’s Intellectual and formerly with the BBC. Plain-speaking, intelligent and no-nonsense. She brings a different kind of authority to the group.
NORMAN 60’s/70’s An ageing roué and incorrigible flirt. Rackety, mischievous and still determined to pursue women and pleasure. The comedy works best if he is played as a recognisable human being rather than simply a dirty-old-man caricature.
JEAN 60’s/70’s Douglas’s wife and a retired teacher. Bossy, smug and politically left-wing. She believes herself worldly and culturally sophisticated, but India exposes some uncomfortable contradictions in her attitudes and in her marriage.
MURIEL 70’s A retired cleaner and working-class Londoner. Tough, blunt and resilient. She initially carries significant prejudices, but her journey is one of the play’s most important transformations.
MR GUPTA 40’s/50’s South Asian. Manager of the call centre. Authoritarian and something of a martinet.
MRS KAPOOR 40’s/50’s South Asian/Indian. Sonny’s mother. Strong-willed, emotional and highly strung. A formidable presence who has definite ideas about her son and his future.
SAHANI 20’s South Asian/Indian. Beautiful, feisty and fun. In love with Sonny. She should have energy and agency of her own rather than simply functioning as the girlfriend.
KAMILA 20’s South Asian. Works at the call centre. A younger contemporary Indian presence in the story.
JIMMY 60’s/70’s South Asian/Indian. The hotel’s extremely elderly servant/retainer. His age and connection to the hotel give him a sense of belonging to an older India and to the Kapoor family’s history.
SONNY KAPOOR Early 30’s South Asian/Indian. Mrs Kapoor’s son. Good-looking, immensely endearing, enthusiastic and somewhat hapless. He has inherited responsibility for the crumbling hotel and possesses considerably more optimism than practical expertise.
MOHAN 20’s South Asian. Works at the call centre. In the original professional production, Mohan and Tikal were played by the same actor, so doubling is possible.
TIKAL 20’s South Asian/Indian. The hotel’s sweeper. Originally doubled with Mohan.
Important casting point on ethnicity
Mr Gupta, Mrs Kapoor, Sahani, Kamila, Jimmy, Sonny Kapoor, Mohan and Tikal are Indian or from surrounding countries and of South Asian heritage, and the actors playing those roles should be cast accordingly. It also expressly prohibits altering an actor’s ethnicity through make-up or prosthetics.
The seven British retirees—Evelyn, Douglas, Madge, Dorothy, Norman, Jean and Muriel—are the older British ensemble. Their social and regional identities are much more dramatically important than trying to impose unnecessary ethnicity requirements: Evelyn’s Home Counties background, Muriel’s working-class London identity, Jean and Douglas’s retired-teacher background, and so on.
Audition pieces
To follow