Game. Set. Match.: Dubai’s multicultural take on Perfect Strangers returns in October
The stage adaptation of Perfect Strangers that sold out at Mall of the Emirates last year is back for three nights at Alserkal Avenue, with a new venue, a reworked script and a slightly different cast.
Seven friends, a wedding at a tennis club resort and one bad idea over dinner: everyone puts their phone on the table, and every message and call is shared with the group. That’s the premise of Game. Set. Match., the Dubai stage adaptation of Perfect Strangers, which returns to The Junction on Alserkal Avenue from Friday 16 to Sunday 18 October.
The first run, in September 2025, was the first production staged at the Playhouse Studio Theatre in the new Covent Garden at Mall of the Emirates, and the producers say every show sold out. The rematch moves to a 170-seat black box for three performances. That’s roughly 500 seats in total, so anyone who missed it last year shouldn’t leave booking too late.
The world’s most remade film, retold for Dubai
Paolo Genovese’s 2016 Italian comedy-drama is, as of January 2024, recognised by Guinness World Records as the most remade film, with 24 versions in different languages, including Arabic and Hindi. Each of those versions keeps its cast within a single culture. Game. Set. Match. doesn’t: one couple is Indian, one Arabic-speaking and one European.
“It was very deliberate,” says Asad Raza Khan, co-producer and lead actor, and founder of Tall Tales Production. “We want to celebrate community, residents and everyone who calls Dubai home. All of us have friends and family from different cultures, and we wanted to make it relatable for everyone here.”
Khan says Dubai, where so many nationalities live side by side, was the obvious place to try it. When the show launched last year, the producers framed it around the UAE’s Year of Community.
Asad Raza Khan
What’s changed for the rematch
Moving the characters across cultures meant more than recasting. Khan says the dialogue and the way the characters speak to one another were largely rewritten, while the story itself stayed intact. “Overall, we have kept the plot and pacing true to the original,” he says.
For the re-run, writer Sid Abbas has reworked parts of the script and staging “just to make it fresher”, in Khan’s words. Meghana Dhawan directs, with Satya Baskaran of Cross Bronx Studio as co-director and producer. There’s also a change to the cast: Rasheed Hattab, an Emirati actor playing a Lebanese character, joins for the re-run, for example.
Rasheed Hattab
Seeing yourself in someone else’s phone
The detail from last year’s run that stayed with Khan wasn’t the laughs. It was who laughed at what. He says audience members often recognised themselves in characters from a different background: Lebanese audience members saw themselves in the Indian or Pakistani characters, and vice versa. “It just shows that we, living in the UAE, share the same soul, even if we come from different backgrounds.”
Hattab, who plays a Lebanese character, found the recognition went both ways. “There’s a moment in the show where my character reacts in a way that immediately reminded me of someone I used to be very close to,” he says. “I wasn’t trying to figure out how this character would behave, because I have seen it before.”
He’s also interested in what shifts when a story this widely told arrives somewhere new. “The foundation is the same, but the humour lands differently, the characters feel different and even certain moments suddenly mean something else here.”
For Khan, playing his own character felt close to home. “It is honestly just a reflection of my life on stage,” he says. “It also made me question what exactly my ‘real’ friends are hiding in ‘real’ life.”
The phone is the eighth character
Anyone who has watched a group chat go wrong will recognise the play’s engine. “Every time the phone rings, the audience’s anxiety rises,” says Jennifer Schmidt, the German actor who plays a European socialite. She compares it to arguing with a friend, colleague or partner over text, where each new notification raises your blood pressure a little more. “The alerts are an integral character in this play.”
Jennifer Schmid
The people behind it
Tall Tales Production has staged more than 70 productions in the UAE over 12 years. Cross Bronx Studio, founded in 2020, has built a following on the local circuit with comedy, drama and Shakespeare adaptations. Alongside Khan and Schmidt, the cast includes Priyanka Johri, Mahmoud Basyoni, Ziyad Bangara, Ryan Durand and Reem Tarifi, for whom last year’s run was a first full-length production.
The ensemble has clearly stuck together. Khan says the cast now travel and eat out together off stage. At the first table read, they found themselves comparing notes on which real people in their lives each character reminded them of.
Before you book
Asked what a first-timer should expect, Khan keeps it simple: “Get ready to laugh, relate, be shocked and, in the end, question yourself and the ones around you. We all have secrets; this play just brings it all to the forefront.”
Game. Set. Match.
The Junction, Alserkal Avenue, Al Quoz, Dubai. Friday 16 to Sunday 18 October 2026, running time 120 minutes (with a 10-minute interval), tickets start from Dhs105, age guidance 13+. Booking via platinumlist.net
Frequently asked questions
What is Game. Set. Match. about?
Seven friends at a wedding at a tennis club resort agree to put their phones on the table and share every message and call, with predictable consequences.
Is Game. Set. Match. based on Perfect Strangers?
Yes. It’s a multicultural stage adaptation of Paolo Genovese’s 2016 Italian film Perfetti sconosciuti, rewritten for a Dubai setting.
When and where is Game. Set. Match. on in Dubai?
16 to 18 October 2026 at The Junction, Alserkal Avenue.
How much are tickets for Perfect Strangers?
From Dhs105, via platinumlist.net
Who is in the cast?
Asad Raza Khan, Jennifer Schmidt, Priyanka Johri, Ziyad Bangara, Harry Apostoleris, Reem Tarifi, and Rasheed Hattab.
