TEHRAN -- Germany-based Iranian playwright and director Alireza Kushk-Jalali is helming his troupe in performing an adaptation of the French comedy drama “The Intouchables” at Nazerzadeh Kermani Theater in Tehran.

Kushk-Jalali wrote the play based on French writer Philippe Pozzo di Borgo’s “A Second Wind”, the real-life story that inspired “The Intouchables”.

The book is a biography of its author. As the descendant of two prominent French families and director of one of the most celebrated champagne houses in the world, Philippe Pozzo di Borgo was not someone in the habit of asking for help. Then, in 1993, right on the heels of his wife being diagnosed with a terminal illness, a paragliding accident left him a quadriplegic.

Passing his days hidden behind the high walls of his Paris townhouse, Philippe found himself the modern equivalent of an “untouchable” — unable to reach out to others, as others were afraid to reach out to him.

The only person who seemed unaffected by Philippe’s condition was someone who had been marginalized his entire life — Abdel, the unemployed, uninhibited Algerian immigrant who would become his unlikely caretaker. In between dramas and jokes, he sustained Philippe’s life for the next ten years.

“The story is the confluence of two quite different worlds, and is filled with a fusion of tragic and comedy moments between two men of two ideologies,” Kushk-Jalali told the Persian service of Honaronline on Sunday.

“I wrote the play due to some conditions existing in Iran. Moreover, I made some modifications to make the story accessable for the Iranian audience,” he added.

He uses videos and light to create the appropriate stage for the play, which will be running until June 12.

Nader Fallah, Sina Razani, Baharek Kian-Afshar, Maya Razavi and Amir-Hossein Jeddi are members of the troupe.

Photo: Iranian playwright and director Alireza Kushk-Jalali’s troupe performs comedy drama “The Intouchables” at Nazerzadeh Kermani Theater in Tehran on May 12, 2015. (Mehr/Hadi Hirbodvash)

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