With Aapki Soniya, director Alyy Khan who dreamt up the project has some pretty tall shoes to fill. While India may have been in the thrall of Tumhari Amrita, to which Aapki Sonia is the sequel, it was Love Letters, the play by American playwright A.R. Gurney on which Tumhari Amrita is based that took Pakistan by storm. Put up way back in the day in Karachi Starring Imran Aslam as Alan Makepeace Ladd III and Rehana Saigol as Melissa Gardner and directed by Hameed Haroon, Love Letters was epic theatre that elicited the deepest emotional response as the two read letters spanning over 50 years to each other, sharing the things two great friends and almost lovers share, separated by distance.

The ploy was such a success that many years later, Imran Aslam would adopt the same to write the script for  Engro Excellence Awards that he narrated with Feryal Gohar. At the ceremony, the two are also people separated by miles and miles, writing to each other and reminiscing keynotes in Pakistani history. The chemistry of two good friends and lovers writing to each other makes for riveting viewing as opposed to some master of ceremonies on stage droning on and giving half-hearted platitudes.

But I digress. Then some years later after Love Letters, Tumhari Amrita came to Karachi with Shabana Azmi and Farooque Sheikh to raise funds for some charity or the other. It was fabulous and had a completely different, lilting vibe in Javed Siddiqui’s more-Urdu-than-Hindi adaptation. Again the house was packed thanks to the stardust of La Azmi and the man everyone remembers as the Nawab from Umrao Jaan. Comparisons with Love Letters were inevitably made and those who had seen both were divided over which was better.

It’s inevitable once more that  comparisons with both Love Letters and Tumhari Amrita will be made when Aapki Sonia is staged. Sajid Hasan and Mehwish Hayat have a lot of expectations to live up to with this, as indeed does Alyy Khan the director who incidentally is Rehana Saigol’s son-in-law!

It will be very interesting to see how the dynamics change with different actors. While in India, Tumhari Amrita is associated with Shabana Azmi and Farooque Sheikh who have been performing it for years, the variety of people who have played Alan and Melissa over the years is staggering. They include Elizabeth Taylor, James Earl Jones, Christopher Walken, Stockard Channing, Sigourney Weaver and even Christopher ‘Superman’ Reeve.

 Theatre is all about mixing it up; here’s looking forward to seeing the energy Aapki Sonia brings to the stage. – Muniba Kamal

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Tumhari Amrita and Aapki Sonia have their roots in AR Gurney’s Love Letters that was staged brilliantly in Karachi with Rehana Saigol and Imran Aslam. Then Shabana Azmi and Farooque Sheikh came to town with Tumhari Amrita...