Showing posts with label musical. Show all posts
Showing posts with label musical. Show all posts

Saturday, June 09, 2012

Wah! Wah! Girls

Don't hold your breath, grandpa, this post ain't about girls, girls, girls :)

It is about a musical that is playing in London, which the Guardian doesn't care for much:
You could translate "wah! wah!" – how some Indian audiences express their pleasure at a performance – as "bravo!". Sadly, there's far more woe than wah in this feeble attempt to create a British Bollywood musical, which seems to owe more to a dull episode of EastEnders than it does to rich traditions elsewhere. The costumes often have a bright, jewelled swagger, but the rest of Keith Khan's designs, including what appears to be a papier-mache red London bus, look cheap and tacky, as if the budget had unexpectedly run out.
Ouch!

And the review ends with this line:
there is not a single song you'd come out singing.
Must have sucked big time, eh!



The music that the above video begins with is one of my favorite fun-songs-videos--the colors, the tune, the beat, ... I haven't watched this movie.  Early on during my graduate schooling days, one of the visits back to India, this song was the rage then and seemed like I could never go five minutes before somebody somewhere cranked it all over again... here is that movie original:



Anyway, hey, grandpa, that Elvis movie that you had in mind, featured this awesome piece:



It is crazy to think that "Return to Sender" was in 1962, and the Beatles appeared in the Ed Sullivan Show only slightly more than a year later.  Yet, the two come across as from two different generations!

With the girls theme, here is one of my favorite Beatles number:



Well, I might as well wrap up this post by looping back to India, with the Beatles; happy listening!

Saturday, May 07, 2011

Remembering Arthur Laurents

I hadn't yet completed my first year of living in the US as a poor graduate student when I watched West Side Story.  It was small television set that my roommate owned, and yet that miniscule screen size didn't take away the excitement of the musical in any way.  I am reminded of all that because of the news that one of the four people involved in creating that phenomenal musical, Arthur Laurents, died.

It is not as if I had been listening to Broadway musicals in India.  Not at all.  West Side Story was my first ever, and what a way to fall in love with Broadway!  I had no idea about Bernstein and Sondheim too.  So, there I was completely transfixed by the visual and aural experience.

Even though I was only on a student visa at that time, I had left India with a larger idea of making America my home, if things worked out well.  So, naturally, the piece that really, really, grabbed my attention was "America."  Now, when I discuss migration and immigration in my classes, every once in a while I play "America" for my students too



Yes, "I like to be in America" ... Ole!

And, of course, "Tonight"



Over the years, I have watched more musicals, including Gypsy.  It was the revival with Patti Lupone that I watched on Broadway. "Honey, everything's coming up roses"



I suppose I have gotten to an age in my life when I can relate in more ways than one to "the way we were"



Thanks, Mr. Laurents

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Wednesday, September 09, 2009

Healthcare Q/A with Obama: the musical

Creativity unleashed on the web. Awesome. Thankfully, there is no way we can return to the dark ages, I mean, pre-www :-) HT