The Stage

Gupta’s play to explore story of Queen Victoria and ‘Indian John Brown’ Karim

Published Thursday 10 December 2009 at 11:20 by Matthew Hemley

Award-winning playwright Tanika Gupta is to throw the spotlight on Queen Victoria’s relationship with an Indian man servant in a new play for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

The Empress focuses on Queen Victoria’s affections for Abdul Karim, who began serving her as a dining room waiter and was later promoted to become her Indian Secretary.

Gupta, whose previous credits as a playwright include Sugar Mummies at the Royal Court and who was awarded an MBE in 2008, described Karim as “an Indian John Brown”.

“He is quite a character. It’s a ready-made drama,” she added.

The playwright revealed she has used letters Victoria wrote to Karim in Hindi for research and said that the cast for the production would be 30-strong.

She explained that she had received the commission after complaining at a conference, attended by RSC artistic director Michael Boyd, that she was “sick of writing contemporary drama for young people”.

“I said I wanted to write a big history play, with lots of Asians and black and white people running around in 19th-century costume, and Michael said, ‘Go on then’,” she added.

The Empress is set to be produced in 2011 by the RSC and Gupta said she is hoping to persuade Richard Jones, who is behind the Young Vic’s current production of Annie Get Your Gun, to direct it. Jones previously worked with Gupta on her adaptation of Harold Brighouse’s Hobson’s Choice.