India
Ayahs, lascars and munshis: staging The EmpressWednesday, 17 April 2013
It was over four years ago that I was commissioned by Michael Boyd, then artistic director of the RSC, to write a play which I had vaguely pitched to him as “a costume drama set in the nineteenth century with Asians running around in it”. And... Read more... |
theartsdesk in India: Endangered classical music, and aerialist dancersSaturday, 13 April 2013
I hadn’t been through Mumbai (although lots of people there still call it Bombay) for a while – I once Iived in a beach house here for several months in Juhu while working on a fairly insane project with, among others, Boy George, Bollywood playback... Read more... |
Interview: HariharanFriday, 12 April 2013
Hariharan gives the appearance at least of being fabulously laid-back when I meet him in the lobby of one of Mumbai’s top five star hotels. Wearing a jaunty hat, he is recognised by a lot of passers-by, and when he orders a cappuccino HH is... Read more... |
Victoria Wood's Nice Cup of Tea, BBC OneFriday, 12 April 2013
The cup of tea is a national institution that brings comfort and good cheer to millions. So is Victoria Wood. Blend them in a pot and you’ve got a pleasing brew called Victoria Wood's Nice Cup of Tea. It might not have been so. When Wood last... Read more... |
La Bayadère, The Royal BalletSunday, 07 April 2013
Jane Austen would approve, I think, of the plot of La Bayadère, which is about class and wealth getting in the way of love. She might have difficulty with the setting. It is a grand, exotically located ballet offering us an fantastical India of... Read more... |
DVD: The JourneyTuesday, 29 January 2013
Poetic restraint dominates Ligy J. Pullapally’s 2004 Kerala-set lesbian drama The Journey (Sancharram). Based on a true story of a relationship between two young women that ended in one's suicide (a conclusion that’s left open in the film), its... Read more... |
Midnight's ChildrenWednesday, 26 December 2012
It’s always the second-rate fiction which makes first-rate films, because there’s nothing to lose but plot. Midnight’s Children, lest anyone be allowed to forget, is first-rate fiction. It has won the Booker, the Booker of Bookers and James Tait... Read more... |
Remembering Ravi Shankar, 1920-2012Thursday, 13 December 2012
While living in Bombay in the late 1940s, betrayed by a business partner and his first marriage in the midst of painful implosion, Ravi Shankar decided to commit suicide. At the eleventh hour, a holy man, who happened to be passing by, knocked on... Read more... |
Much Ado About Nothing, Noël Coward TheatreFriday, 28 September 2012
Never quite at the top of the Shakespearean canon, Much Ado About Nothing now seems more vital and adaptable than ever – and vastly darker than, say, Kenneth Branagh’s sun-kissed screen romp acknowledged back in 1993. The cult director Joss Whedon... Read more... |
London Mela, Gunnersbury ParkTuesday, 21 August 2012
The look for many young Asian guys in deepest west London appears to focus on how thin they can sculpt their goatees. Well-muscled, chiselled even, sporting either a bowl-crop or one of those spiky, gelled, junior estate agent haircuts, and clad in... Read more... |
Bamboo Blues, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, Barbican TheatreSaturday, 23 June 2012
Premiered in 2007, Bamboo Blues was generated by a visit to Kolkata; and with the simplest of means, designer Peter Pabst conjures the vast landscapes of India. The first half unfolds against a backdrop of white muslin curtains rippling in the wind... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: All's Well That Ends Well, Shakespeare's GlobeFriday, 25 May 2012
It's both easy and fashionable to render ironic, or scoff at, the title of All's Well That Ends Well. This is the Shakespeare "comedy" in which the rabidly obsessed Helena finally ensnares her none-too-doting Bertram in a putative happy ending that... Read more... |
