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The Winter’s Tale

This story of Shakespeare’s creation adapted to fit in a modern day world started its weave with quite a heavy psychological drama. With jealousy bringing down a loving heart, tearing a family apart and rending the weave awry. But as the winter passes the cold, dark human heart slowly gives way to true penitence. Years go by, the warmth of a grieving heart and miracle professed by the Oracle brings the princess home with the advent of spring. The end brings a closure, with a family now reunited in a world full of colours again and the weave of the story whole and beautiful again.

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Burning Doors - Theatre with a cause behind it has that power that lets it go to that extra mile which a sane person would not think to toe.

This, piece of charismatic performance brought to the audience the pain of Ukrainian Prisoners in Russia. As the tag line very soulfully suggests “Undeniable Victims of an Undeclared Wars”. Through the heart- renting words of Dostoevsky, the art activism of a unique Russian artist, this group brought to the forefront and into the consciousness of its audience a zeal to set things right.

Without an inherent belief in its righteousness, no actor could have performed an act of such depth.

I still am at a loss, about how to react to this performance. But I would recommend it to anyone who would bet that they would see this act and not be moved by it. Anyone up for this challenge?

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Her Name Was Carmen!

At the Coliseum in London today. After a long time I’m updating this blog. This performance of masterful Ballet needs to be recorded.

Her Name Was Carmen is a re- representation of the famous Carmen Opera by Prosper Mérimée with a twist. It merges the story of the fiery Carmen with the current refugee crisis in Europe. Irina Kolesnikova, one of the world’s leading ballerina’s brain child to help spread awareness about the plight of refugees at the borders of nations, highlighting the pain of torn families, orphaned children through her own platform, ballet. It weaves a very touching tale of Carmen as a refugee. Her troupe’s grace and technique in this performance is flawless.

Since I have recently started learning Odissi, the ancient dance form of Odisha in India, my interest in watching this performance was obvious. How cleverly the choreographers have managed to convey a very recent social message through the medium of an old opera!

Will it be possible to do the same with Oddisi? Take the traditional base of Odissi and tell a story which would touch the heart and soul of a modern man.

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contact.com at Park theatre, Finsbury Park. What a talented company of actors!

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La Joaquina's scorching performance at hackney Attic on 14th September' 2014. The sizzling slow number was mesmerizing. A different type of flamenco than what I saw in Spain but equally involving if not more.

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La Joaqina totally owned the stage yesterday with her Flamenco at Hackney Attic. The poise and power exuding from her was palpable. One of the best flamenco performances I have had the luck to watch outside of Spain.

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Today was the day for Daytona at the theatre Royal in Haymarket. I went there with a bit of trepidation since theatre royal doesn’t exactly play fringe plays. It is more mainstream in reputation. But I was not disappointed.

The story could have had a happy ending but usually reality doesn’t tend to follow the pattern. It felt like watching an “art movie” going by what real life storyline movies are tagged in Bollywood.

There were a total on 3 actors in the play. It was a 120 mins play. But the actors were so good that a 3 act play did not actually feel like that. It had a thrilling story line.

Joe and Ellen a married couple 74 and 70 year old respectively. The scene opens with them practising for a dance competition. After the scene Joe gets back to doing accounting and Ellen leaves him to get her dancing competition dress fitted. That’s when Billy, the brother of Joe arrives with Chinese food.

Joe and Billy hadn’t seen each other for over 30 years. It was quite a bit of surprise for Joe to find his brother at his doorstep. Billy then starts telling the story about how he spent the last couple of days and that’s how the story unfolds.

Billy tell Joe that he had built a new life in Illinois with a new identity. They go on a holiday to Daytona beach every year. There he saw Frances Gruber, who was there with his family with a false identity. Billy had shot Frances Gruber. It later unfolds that Frances Gruber was a Nazi war criminal who had killed many innocent people in Germany. Joe and Billy and Ellen were survivor of wartime concentration camps who have later migrated to US and made a life for themselves until Billy had runway. On seeing Gruber at Daytona, Billy had decided to take the law into his own hand and killed him in front of a swimming pool full of witnesses.

He then had rushed to find Joe and Ellen to tell them about it. At first Billy isn’t clear about why he had left his brother and his wife in the first place giving some vague answers like his heart problems lead him to fled the company of the family.

But later when he had a quite moment with Ellen the next morning the story becomes clear. Ellen and Joe met each other in Leipzig when they were 18. When Joe was away Billy and Ellen became lovers but during that time Ellen was taken into a concentration camp. Billy and Joe followed her there to try and save her. They managed to escape and come to the USA. But after coming to the US Ellen and Joe got married. Ellen and Billy loved each other deeply. Billy asked Ellen many a times to tell Joe that she couldn’t be with him but she couldn’t gather the courage to do so. Unable to bear the shame and jealousy Billy finally left the couple without letting anyone know and hence the new identity.

Joe tells Ellen that he had never stopped thinking about Ellen all these years. Ellen tells him the story about how she feel sick after he left and then hallucinated his death by drowning after a year and that’s when she finally managed to get over Billy’s loss and get on with her life. She had taken up photography and dancing had become her passion. She then asks him what his new life was like. From his descriptions it was pretty clear that Billy did not enjoy his life and Ellen cries over his wasted life and lost happiness. She says “who is to say that what one thinks is wrong wrong is actually wrong and what one things as right is actually right.” And they mourn over the wasted time.

When Joe returns from his client, Billy’s pictures were on the front pages of the newspaper. Joes asks him give himself up at the nearby precinct. Not quite sure what the future held for him, he asks Joe and Ellen to perform their dance routine for him and they do. The end arrives with Joe accompanying Billy to the precinct as a brother and Ellen looking out of the window at the departing brothers.

The story could have had a happy ending or a sad one. But the writers chose to leave it hanging for better or for worse. But the acting was flawless. Maureen Lipman, Harry Shearer and Oliver Cotton were truly amazing. Kudos to a brilliant cast!

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Quite a refreshing take on the sorry of the grim reaper. Very different from what I expected. The tag line did say it’s a love story to die for and deliver, it did certainly, what it promised.

This gothic tale started with quite a promise from very outset when hooded and cloaked the actors surrounded the stage to the of the stall and stared with the song “Death”.

A brave production with unexpected twists. First of which the grim being a la belle dame. The storyline goes something like this. The grim reaper couldn’t understand the feeling of sadness and heartbreak at the death of a loved one when death came for and to everything. So in order to learn these emotions she joins the Coure Noir school as a very studious and an odd student.

There she meets Cupid, the most popular boy in school and heart throb of all the girls. Cupid falls for Grim at first sight. He asks her to join him for the Halloween dance and his song “She said yes” was one which rang the theatre.

But gradually Grim too starts falling for him. But being with him would kill him. Grim could not line without her soul and Cupid without his soulmate. So therein lies the conundrum.

The curtain falls with "the strongest power of life is love" song. The audience couldn't have been roused more. A strong cast, beautiful music, a lovely story and fitting ambience. What more could one ask for in a theatre. With a bit more rehearsal and a bit more support it will soon be in west end for sure.