Theater: “Monsoon Wedding” @ St Ann’s Warehouse

What if you took “Fiddler on the Roof,” tossed it with “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” then added a heaping dose of Biryana Masala spice? You’d have something like “Monsoon Wedding,” Mira Nair’s cheerful (and somewhat chaotic) musical version of the 2006 film, currently at St. Ann’s Warehouse.

Like most Indian weddings (full disclosure: I’ve only been to one), the play doesn’t start on time and seems to go on forever. That’s fine because the playwright has a lot to talk about: arranged marriage, the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, and intergenerational hanky-panky.

Hemant Rai (Deven Kolluri), a straight-arrow, Princeton-grad banker from Hoboken, is betrothed to Aditi (Salena Qureshi), a beautiful young Delhi woman whom he’s never met. He and his family arrive in India and are greeted by the Vermas, the bride-to-be’s close-knit ebullient family. No one has any idea that this sweet young thing has been messing around with her married boss Vikrant (Manju Singh Anand) for years.

While this time bomb is ticking, there’s a secondary romance going on—between Dubey, the nerdy unmarried wedding planner (Namur Das), and Alice (Anisha Nagarajan), the Verma’s household maid who is Christian not Hindu. Their comic hijinks and Dubey’s nagging Indian mother (Sargam Ipshita Bali) steal the show.

Good thing your program provides a scorecard to keep track of all the characters in this musical—you will need one. As for the score, some of the tunes are lively, others are touching—in the case of the latter, we have “Neither Here Nor There” which nails the dilemma of a South Asian guy who feels like an American in India, and an Indian in America.

The costumes by Arjun Bhasin are colorful, the writing is witty (with Hindi expressions thrown in from time to time) and the cast members generally look like they’re having a ball. If family-centered Bollywood-ish comedy is your bag, you will like it too. Just don’t be surprised if you’re craving freshly baked paratha on your way out.