Sequel of a cinema hall

Post-renovation, Mumbai's Metro Adlabs sports a new look but retains its old charm.

It is tough to please everyone when history is at stake, but the newly refurbished Metro Adlabs has tried to satisfy the whimsies of the youth and assuage the apprehensions of the cinema's old-timers.

You can tell people are fascinated. At the Dhobi Talao junction outside Metro Cinema, recently re-christened Metro Adlabs, pedestrians and motorists alike stop, stare and point.

Beggar children swarm the precinct, hoping to be recipients of some of the money that has obviously been fed into the transformation... surely the patrons will be more affluent now.

The Art Deco cinema, Mumbai's second after Regal, has been granted a second coming, after some years of crying for attention. Towards the tail end of its time as a single screen theatre, there was little to show for the eminence of "The Theatre of the Stars", the dazzling Art Deco cinema planned and built by MGM studios in 1938 as a showcase for their films in Mumbai.

It became the first of the three Grand Dames of Art Deco cinema "" Regal and Eros the other two "" to fall prey to the lure of the money-spinning, crowd-drawing multiplex.

There were murmurs of disapproval from custodians of the city's heritage and a tremendous amount of apprehension. "We actually contemplated gutting the interiors and starting from scratch," admits Pranav Desai, head interior architect, Metro Adlabs.

"After four months of tossing ideas back and forth, we decided that there were too many people who had walked through the doors of Metro and too many memories to disregard," says Pooja Shetty, director, Adlabs.

So, fortunately, armed with some imagination and deep pockets, Adlab Films, who were leased the property by the owners, decided against taking a wrecking ball to it.

Opening with a trademark blockbuster Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna last week, audiences were treated to reminders of the old Metro. The foyer remains, and so do the grand staircase, the teak wood columns lifting up the 9-metre ceilings, the Belgian chandeliers bearing striking resemblance to the Chrysler building and the herringbone patterned glass mirror at mid-landing.

Even the total seat capacity of 1,491 stayed untouched, a fair feat considering the capacity had to be divided amongst six screens.

"The other choice was to reduce the capacity to 40 per cent and use the rest of the space commercially," says Desai.

The newly infused modernity is unmistakable, and Adlabs has ensured that Metro lives up to be its finest flagship property in terms of not just modern cinema technology but also self-indulgent extravagances. (For instance, the men's restrooms come equipped with entertainment screens.)

Shetty felt like she was walking on eggshells for a while. "I spent sleepless nights worrying about what old timers would say," she says. "We knew we could never recreate the original Metro," says Desai, "and frankly that was never our intention."

Shetty heaved a sigh of relief when director Yash Chopra, who has staged several premieres in the cinema, called her after visiting Metro Adlabs and admitted that he found it more beautiful than it ever was.

Reactions like that, she says, justify the Rs 15 crore investment "" twice the investment on Adlabs' standard multiplex projects "" made on the project. "Multiplexes have set templates, it's either an A, B or C class multiplex and there are standard investments for each category," says Shetty.

"With most of our projects, we follow the finish-and-move-on mantra, but Metro held our collective attention. I hope we get another project just as fantastically complicated as this one," she adds.

She just might. By all accounts, the owners of Regal and Eros Cinemas have held conversion at bay. But with single screen establishments turning unviable, maintenance costs only mounting and fewer whimsical rich patrons willing to mitigate the financial burden of refurbishment, they might not be left with much to choose from. Besides, Metro has proved that achieving some form of middle-ground is not entirely mission impossible.

As I prepared to leave the cinema, that assertion came ironically, in the form of the characteristic vertical marquee on the facade of the theatre, that still reads "Metro". "We weren't allowed to touch that," says Desai.