Bombay Dreams in SEATTLE, WA. Last Chance to See the Show.- Page 17

[muscle23ftl]

Posted: 3/12/06 at 3:09am

amazing review!!!

[Steve2]

Posted: 3/12/06 at 12:36pm

Thanks for the review RentBoy. I was curious about your question about eunuchs in India so I did a search and included a link below. Yes, Aneesh Sheth as Sweetie gives a great performance and has a beautiful voice.
Eunuchs -- India's Third Gender

[RentBoy86]

Posted: 3/12/06 at 2:07pm

I agree. It was great when he sang because I could actually understand him and his voice is very pure and beautiful. The only part of his performance that was underwhelming was his scene with Vikrim - if you know what i mean? W/o giving away too many spoilers?

[muscle23ftl]

Posted: 3/12/06 at 5:39pm

I just can't wait to see this show, almost a month away from FL.

[muscle23ftl]

Posted: 3/14/06 at 10:05pm

anyone seeing the show in Ohio?

[muscle23ftl]

Posted: 3/15/06 at 2:22pm

this is the official website of the tour
http://www.reallyuseful.com/rug/shows/bombaydreams/buy.htm

[Steve2]

Posted: 3/15/06 at 11:01pm

I used to buy tickets for my brother in Columbus (Ohio) but no more. If they wouldn't take their kids to Phantom of the Opera, they would never see Bombay Dreams.

My Phantom of the Opera Family Drama Updated On: 3/15/06 at 11:01 PM

[chenofan]

Posted: 3/15/06 at 11:36pm

I loved the tour - ya'll should check it out.

[TLKfan]

Posted: 3/15/06 at 11:47pm

Rentboy, they actually title each of the scenes with the song titles even though they actually don't sing it. It's kind of strange, but that's how they worked it.

[chenofan]

Posted: 3/15/06 at 11:54pm

He, I just wnated to let you know that the touring cas ti really great. The show its self is strong, though not as strong as the bway or London production. If you go, not expecting Hamlet, but looking for a great evening of fun 0 then you wil get it. Give the show a chance - trust me there are worse shows out there - I can supply a list if you want

[Thesbijean]

Posted: 3/15/06 at 11:56pm

Just because there are much worse shows doesn't make the show good...

I had fun at the Broadway production, but I would not place it on my top 100 shows...

[muscle23ftl]

Posted: 3/16/06 at 1:51am

Well...you had fun and that is everything that matters, how many times do we go to the theatre and we get bored, this wouldn't be the case with Bombay Dreams. And yes, it's far from a pulitzer prize, but many of the hit-shows touring and on Bway have no depth at all.


Steve2: Why don't you just buy tickets for your brother and his wife and they can go to see the show with friends and leave their kids with a reliable person.

Updated On: 3/16/06 at 01:51 AM

[muscle23ftl]

Posted: 3/16/06 at 3:47pm

Updated On: 7/14/06 at 03:47 PM

[DottieD'Luscia]

Posted: 3/16/06 at 3:54pm

Is that the poster from the tour? Too bad it's not playing close to DC or I would give this show a try.

[Drew7810]

Posted: 3/16/06 at 3:59pm

Well, I have not seen the production and unfortunately will not be able to but a friend of mine volunteers as an usher at the theatre and said that last night, there were some technical difficulties in the production that made for awkward moments. I will see if i can get more out of him on specifics of the problems.

[muscle23ftl]

Posted: 3/16/06 at 5:53pm

any comments on Bayoork Lee's direction and choreography?

[RentBoy86]

Posted: 3/16/06 at 6:24pm

So did they use stage hands for the Broadway show too or did things move in and out using tracks?

[muscle23ftl]

Posted: 3/16/06 at 9:09pm

Dottie, that pic was on the Broadway theatre in NYC. Not for the tour.

[BwayTheatre11]

Posted: 3/16/06 at 11:30pm

https://www.broadwayworld.com/showinfo.cfm?showid=729

Principle cast bios up...ensemble coming soon!

[muscle23ftl]

Posted: 3/17/06 at 2:09pm

awesome!!!

[iluvtheatertrash]

Posted: 3/17/06 at 2:12pm

I wish I had the money to follow the tour and see it again. This show was one of my favorites. I had such a blast at it.

[muscle23ftl]

Posted: 3/18/06 at 5:13pm

anyone in Ohio saw it?

[vjRichie]

Posted: 3/19/06 at 1:02am

Hooray for Bollywood . . .

Uh, what’s Bollywood?

Before the Tuesday opening of Bombay Dreams in the Palace Theatre, an explanation might be in order.

The name of the prolific Indian film industry combines Bombay and Hollywood.

‘‘Bollywood started with the poorest of the poor watching movies in tents in India," said Baayork Lee, the director of Bombay Dreams.

‘‘Just like American audiences fantasized to escape their harsh reality during the Depression by going to the movies, people dream their dreams through Bollywood films in India."

Bombay Dreams, the first Broadway musical in the Bollywood genre, is set in modern Bombay, or Mumbai — and offers a rags-to-riches saga about a poor Indian man who dreams of becoming a star.

‘‘In Bollywood movies," Lee said, "they have a cast of thousands dancing behind the star in colorful costumes, and we’re trying for the same formula.

‘‘When the hero starts singing, everyone starts dancing behind him like the big choruses of our old American musicals — except we’ve quadrupled it."

Imitating the films, Bombay Dreams features stock characters and colorful images within a mix of music, melodrama and romantic comedy.

‘‘Every Bollywood film has a grieving mother; a love story; and what they call a hero, a heroine and a villain," said Deep Katdare, who plays the villain.

The Indian-American actor — who visited central Ohio in 2001 to shoot Green Card Fever, a southern Asian film — was pleased to tackle his first Indian stage role after playing an Indian on television (Law & Order: Trial by Jury, Over There).

Katdare, 35, is reprising his Broadway part as Vikram Sharma.

"He’s the guy who gets to be bad, as a lawyer trying to raze the slum and displace all the people."

The show also pokes fun at other Bollywood cliches: Any character suddenly breaks into song, the women frequently change costumes, and a romantic scene jumps from a city to a mountaintop.

Sachin Bhatt plays Akaash, a slum dweller from the untouchable caste who dreams of becoming a Bollywood hero.

"He wants to be this big star," said Bhatt, who has relatives in the Columbus area.

The character pays a price when he attains fame, sacrificing his relationships and integrity.

Yet, in keeping with the Bollywood formula, the ending must be happy: The reformed hero gets the girl.

Bhatt — who grew up in St. Louis, with his parents from India — laughs at the trappings of the genre.

Still, he said, Bombay Dreams "is a great opportunity to be in a show with my culture."

The musical incorporates jazz, hip-hop and many types of Indian dancing, including filmi — the term for the fusion style of Bollywood movies.

"Indian dancing is energizing, primitive, vibrant, colorful, passionate and very alive," said choreographer Lisa Stevens, a Canada native who has Indian parents.

"It makes you want to move."

She helped stage Bombay Dreams in London and New York, where she served as associate choreographer and dance captain for British choreographer Anthony van Laast.

The musical ran for about two years in London, buoyed by the support of Andrew Lloyd Webber.

The Phantom of the Opera composer became a coproducer after developing an interest in the cross-cultural music of A.R. Rahman, an Indian composer who has sold more than 100 million albums, including his Lagaan score, worldwide.

"Partly because of the huge population of Indians in London," Stevens said, "Andrew Lloyd Webber had the idea for a long time for a Bollywood love story that would work well with Rahman’s music."

The Broadway show, which opened to mixed reviews in 2004, was revised to make the story more accessible to American audiences. It was reconceived again for the recently launched tour, with Columbus the third stop.

Reviews from Costa Mesa, Calif. — the first stop — were mixed as well.

"The new staging . . . works best when the music is thumping," a Los Angeles Times critic wrote. "When the movement stops, however, the show dies."

Meanwhile, an alternativeweekly review praised the show for its "exoticism and romanticism all in one well-crafted package."

Lee and Stevens seek to put audiences in the mood even before the curtain rises.

"When people walk into the theater," Lee said, "they will feel as if they’re in the midst of an Indian movie set where a Bollywood musical is being made."

Best-known as the original Connie on Broadway in A Chorus Line, she evolved from a dancer-actress into a director with credits such as tours of Jesus Christ Superstar, The King and I and Porgy and Bess.

Stevens restaged the Bombay Dreams dances from scratch, adding new numbers while deleting two.

"You can’t get too traditional, because it won’t land properly," she said. "So doing a version of traditional Indian dancing mixed with commercial jazz and stylized movements creates something pleasing to the eye for American audiences.

"Our goal is for people to leave feeling uplifted."

[vjRichie]

Posted: 3/19/06 at 1:06am

If another Bollywood musical ever makes it to Broadway, few people are likely to remember the first. Yet Bombay Dreams scores points for paving the way.

Given how well it looks, sounds and moves in the national tour, Dreams demands deeper characters than seem extractable from its hokey rags-to-riches melodrama about a poor untouchable who dreams of becoming a Bollywood star.

The cast works hard to liven things up between the rousing musical numbers — the only reason to see the show.

At Tuesday’s opening in the Palace Theatre, the tour offered a fountain of frivolity flavored with just enough of a taste of Bollywood movies to keep the eyes and ears from wandering.

The simplistic book by Meera Syal and Thomas Meehan (Annie) is laughable even when it’s not supposed to be. Based on an idea by Shekhar Kapur and Andrew Lloyd Webber, the musical can’t seem to make up its pretty little mind whether to be sincerely sappy or satirical.

Composer A.R. Rahman has a knack for spicy melodies that triumph over Don Black’s bland lyrics, but too many of the songs blur together and lack theatrical focus.

Director Baayork Lee keeps the actors moving almost fast enough to overlook the forgettable plot. Her framing device doesn’t help much, but Christine Toy Johnson’s brash narration as a celebritymad Bollywood TV-show host adds to the ironic distance between the lampooned landscape and anything remotely resembling the real India.

Lisa Stevens’ sensuous choreography helps establish the exotic atmosphere, reinforced by the colorful costumes and golden lighting.

As the hero, Akaash, Sachin Bhatt adds charm, humor and innocence onto what is pretty much a blank slate. His poignant peak comes during the solo The Journey Home, staged with uncharacteristic simplicity against a starry sky.

Reshma Shetty projects soulful intelligence as Priya, who dreams of making more-serious films about India’s poor.

Shetty and Bhatt’s chemistry seems as sketchy as the story, but their duet How Many Stars? generates romance.

Broadway’s Deep Katdare balances the villainy of Vikram with hints of satire, while Sandra Allen goes for material-girl excess as a cliched Bollywood actress.

Aneesh Sheth’s tempestuous Sweetie and Jeremy Leiner and Skie Ocasio’s eunuchs flamboyantly deliver Love’s Never Easy. Otherwise, they seem like odd interlopers from La Cage aux Folles.

Perhaps the best way to enter into the spirit of Dreams is to imagine being a member of the Depression-era American audiences that went to see double features to escape harsh reality. People didn’t care about the stories in Gold Diggers of 1933, Fashions of 1934 or Gold Diggers of 1935; they just wanted to sit back and enjoy Busby Berkeley’s over-the-top production numbers.

Similarly, Bombay Dreams is at its giddy best in fabulous spectacles such as Shakalaka Baby, complete with a bevy of dancing girls (and boys) and a fountain a la Las Vegas and Shangri-La-di-da.

Too many scenes might be all wet, but such fun-loving spectacle definitely holds water.

[RentBoy86]

Posted: 3/19/06 at 1:25am

I agree with you 100%. What did you think of the set? And the stage hands pushing it on and stuff?