Shakespeare Wallah

Loosely based on the real-life actor-manager ‘s family and his travelling “Shakespeareana Company”, which earned him the Indian “Shakespearewallah”, the film follows the story of nomadic British actors as they perform plays in towns in India. In this story, Tony Buckingham ( ) and his wife Carla (Laura Liddell) oversee the troupe. Their daughter, Lizzie Buckingham ( ), falls in love with Sanju ( ), who is also romancing Manjula ( ), a film star. In real life, Kapoor fell in love with and married Geoffrey Kendal’s elder daughter . Their marriage was an important contribution to the Indian film industry until Kendal’s death in 1984. After the success of the first film, (1963), the team of Ivory and Merchant reunited with screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and actor Shashi Kapoor for this film. Due to budget constraints, the film was shot in black and white, and the Kendal family play their own fictionalized counterparts, the Buckinghams. The film holds a score of 89%, based on 9 critics, on . The film was released on from Odyssey, as well as in a boxset as part of the Merchant Ivory Collection of the .