CriticalDance Forum

Article in the Evening Standard about Andrew Lloyd Webber's forthcoming new musical.<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Britain's love affair with Bollywood, demonstrated by the amazing success of the film Monsoon Wedding, is to be further put to the test as the cast of the West End's first Bolly musical are revealed this week. <P><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/dynamic/hottx/music/top_review.html?in_review_id=436017&in_review_text_id=390487" TARGET=_blank> <B> MORE </B> </A>

And one in the Independent.<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Andrew Lloyd Webber yesterday gave a glimpse of his new baby – a Bollywood musical. Surprisingly, it is a chip off the old block, since he has managed to find a composer who has fused traditional Indian music with catchy melodies that occasionally sound not unlike Lord Lloyd-Webber himself.<P><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/theatre/news/story.jsp?story=118851" TARGET=_blank> <B> MORE </B> </A>

<B>'I got the part, they went ballistic'</B><BR>Preeya Kalidas is the star of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Bombay Dreams - and the new face of British Asian youth. By Amit Roy in the Daily Telegraph<P><BR>PREEYA KALIDAS is only 21, but it seems as if her whole life has been a preparation for playing the lead role in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Bollywood musical, Bombay Dreams - ever since she started ballet classes at the age of three and tap at five.<P> <BR>Preeya Kalidas: 'I want to do everything' <BR>Preeya is the face of the new British Indian girl - very pretty, with glossed lips, lovely hair, an easy personality, nice laugh, an English accent that is pleasing without being too posh, just a touch of street cred and an ability to get her way with men, especially with English men. She is also focused, driven, incredibly hard-working and absolutely determined to get what she wants.<P>If Bombay Dreams proves a hit when it opens in the West End this June - and Lloyd Webber is putting his reputation on the line with it - she will be a role model for the coming generation of Asian teenyboppers.<P><A HREF="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=%2Farts%2F2002%2F03%2F09%2Fbtpre09.xml" TARGET=_blank><B>click for more</B></A><BR>

Article in The Telegraph.<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Andrew Lloyd Webber surprised everyone when he decided cats were right for the West End theatre. Now he is gambling that Bollywood's moment has come. Chloe Fox joins the cast of 'Bombay Dreams' as they mix eastern spice with western polish<P><BR><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2002/05/18/bmbomb.xml&sSheet=/arts/2002/05/18/ixtop.html" TARGET=_blank> <B> MORE </B> </A><P>And in The Times.<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Bollywood may be flavour of the month, but can Andrew Lloyd Webber sell it to West End audiences, asks Simon Fanshawe<BR> <BR> <BR> <BR>Someone whispers in my ear: “Sunrise over Bombay.” Muffled timpani rise and tumble into a starburst of strings. An eastern sound, it somehow also pushes buttons for an untrained western ear. It’s goose-bump music. We are in a London recording studio, listening to the overture of Bombay Dreams, and the person whispering is Meera Syal, star of Goodness Gracious Me and now the author of the script of this original thoroughbred coupé of a musical, set this month to follow its immediate predecessor — the old crock Chitty Chitty Bang Bang — into the West End. <BR> <BR><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-296950,00.html" TARGET=_blank> <B> MORE </B> </A><p>[This message has been edited by Joanne (edited May 19, 2002).]

<B>Musicals: Bombay pluck</B> <BR>Bollywood may be flavour of the month, but can Andrew Lloyd Webber sell it to West End audiences, asks Simon Fanshawe in The Times <BR> <BR> <BR>Someone whispers in my ear: “Sunrise over Bombay.” Muffled timpani rise and tumble into a starburst of strings. An eastern sound, it somehow also pushes buttons for an untrained western ear. It’s goose-bump music. We are in a London recording studio, listening to the overture of Bombay Dreams, and the person whispering is Meera Syal, star of Goodness Gracious Me and now the author of the script of this original thoroughbred coupé of a musical, set this month to follow its immediate predecessor — the old crock Chitty Chitty Bang Bang — into the West End. <BR>In the control box of Sony’s Studio One, there is a full quiver of talent. As well as Syal, there’s Marius de Vries, the man who produced the Moulin Rouge soundtrack and who is quietly in charge of this cast album recording. <P><A HREF="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-533-296950,00.html" TARGET=_blank><B>click for more</B></A>

Article in The Standard.<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Blimey, not another Bollywood article! If I had a rupee for every mention of it this year I'd have, ooh, about £3.62 at the current exchange rate (maybe slightly more on the black market, I'll talk to my contacts, leave it to me). <P><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/dynamic/hottx/theatre/review.html?in_review_id=597569&in_review_text_id=568749" TARGET=_blank> <B> MORE </B> </A>

Mature friends of mine went to see the production - in good company because Shirley Bassey and Joan Collins were in the row behind. They thought the production wonderfully lavish and colourful with bright attention-grabbing devices. But they wondered about the general appeal to British audiences with no ideas as to what Bollywood is. Plus with numbers of American tourists down...how successful will this be? Lloyd Webber has been accused of making mistakes in his choice of subject matter for musicals, but isn;t just that the good topics are becoming exhausted plus public tastes are changing? With a whole spate of new productions of old musicals appearing in the West End and Broadway - all kitsch and retro - maybe he should be looking farthr back in time for his subjects plus make them less of contemporary relevance and bite?

Article oin The Evening Standard.<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>He reports that the first previews for Bombay Dreams, the Bollywood musical he is producing (opens 19 June at the Apollo Victoria), have been well received by audiences, including a large Asian presence. This matters more than usual. "We don't have the huge advance bookings of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang or the Queen musical. It's about the same as when Cats began and no one had any idea what it was all about." <P><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/dynamic/hottx/theatre/review.html?in_review_id=597569&in_review_text_id=574751" TARGET=_blank> <B> MORE </B> </A>

Article in The Guardian on The Bollywood craze.<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Andrew Lloyd Webber's Bombay Dreams - score by the Bombay composer AR Rahman - opens at the Apollo on June 19, and Lloyd Webber and his backers must be keeping their fingers crossed that the considerable publicity translates into booked seats, transfers and long runs; that the Muller moments are few among an audience that has to be stretched beyond its traditional constituency of the sub-continental-born or descended. <P>I expect they will be. If all else fails, there will be the clothes to look at, and the dancing. Escapism - the frowning word for fun - in India will become exoticism (another frown) in London. And Hindi film music, which in any case is a strange compound of western and Middle Eastern influences as well as Indian, is no longer quite so baffling to the European ear. <P><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,729292,00.html" TARGET=_blank> <B> MORE </B> </A>

Interview with lyricist Don Black in The FT.<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Don Black has spent the past two years immersed in Indian music. At the urging of his old friend Andrew Lloyd Webber he undertook to write the lyrics for his new West End musical, Bombay Dreams, which opens on Wednesday.<P>For this project, he has been working with one of the biggest names in Indian popular music: composer A.R. Rahman, whose CD sales of more than 100m a year outstrip those of Madonna. It has proved a weird, if uplifting, experience for Black. "You can't compare Rahman to any other composer - for a start he is very religious. He sits down and improvises for about an hour and I say 'I love that' and he develops those bits. In a way, I'm a song detective."<P><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1024172279079&p=1016625900929" TARGET=_blank> <B> MORE </B> </A>

Not a brilliant review from The Times but the choreography fairs Ok.<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>What’s more, thanks to the choreographers Farah Khan and Anthony Van Laast, the show brings to the West End a dance style — frenetic and self-mockingly lascivious — which will be familiar to every Bollywood fan, but is a welcome change from the tired jazz steps that normally patter around Shaftesbury Avenue. <P><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,685-332660,00.html" TARGET=_blank> <B> MORE </B> </A><P>Did anyone see the documentary on BBC1 on Tuesday? Some of the choreography did look interesting fusing Indian dance with a more modern street style.

The Independent are also not ignited.<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>What is a surprise is the meagre, empty look of the stage. Most of the time the action takes place on the bottom quarter of the proscenium, while the rest is simply blank or filled with a huge movie poster. The dances are repetitious, the hip-shaking, head-waggling movements quickly losing their novelty, and never enlarging character or furthering plot. Indian costumes can knock your eye out when you walk down any Bombay street, but Mark Thompson's saris look as if they climbed out of the bargain bin.<P><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/theatre/reviews/story.jsp?story=307142" TARGET=_blank> <B> MORE </B> </A><P>And more of a preview article in The Guardian.<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Bollywood musical Bombay Dreams, the latest attempt to cash in on the passion for all things Asian, opened in the West End last night. <P>A love story set against the backdrop of the world's biggest film industry, Bombay Dreams has been three years in the making with a reported budget of £4.5m. <P>The show brings the exuberance of Bollywood to the stage with extravagant song and dance routines and spectacular effects including fountains that move with the music<BR><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4444366,00.html#top" TARGET=_blank> <B> MORE </B> </A><P>And also a review.<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>There is something a touch presumptuous about Bombay Dreams. It mockingly contrasts the glittering fantasy of Bollywood movies with the grim reality of Bombay life.Yet what else is a lavish £4.5m musical like this if not an invitation to enter a world of dreams and escape? <P><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4444551,00.html" TARGET=_blank> <B> MORE </B> </A><p>[This message has been edited by Joanne (edited June 20, 2002).]

Review from the FT.<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>With the movie Monsoon Wedding and, now, the musical Bombay Dreams, the entry of Indian culture into mainstream British culture reaches a whole new stage. Both are romances set in present-day India; both dwell on features that are specific to Indian life today; both have other dark elements. Monsoon Wedding gives the movie-going public what has been showing in West End cinemas all year; I've seen it twice, and have left the cinema each time in a glow. Can Bombay Dreams achieve commensurate success? Andrew Lloyd Webber thinks so. On press night, he made a stage speech hailing the show's composer, A. R. Rahman, as the author of some of the most superb theatrical melody any of us have heard in our lifetimes. But are there many people who will agree with this superlative on the strength of this production?<P><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1024578109454&p=1012571727132" TARGET=_blank> <B> MORE </B> </A><P>And The Evening Standard <P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>So the chance of hearing a fresh score scarcely materialises. And though there are seductive foot-tapping, feverishly danced ethnic numbers such as Shakalaka Baby and Chaiyya Chaiyya choreographed by Anthony van Laast and Farah Khan, the only memorable songs, (lyrics by Don Black) are Love's Never Easy and The Journey Home. Both, with their lush, romantic lyricism sound pleasantly familiar - as if they could have been written by the man whose £4 million brainchild the evening is - Andrew Lloyd Webber. <P><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/dynamic/hottx/theatre/review.html?in_review_id=597569&in_review_text_id=588269" TARGET=_blank> <B>[MORE </B> </A><p>[This message has been edited by Joanne (edited June 21, 2002).]

Can any of our intrepid reporters share a view? Who has seen it? Comparisons have been drawn with Starlight Express by those I have spoken to - ont he basis that it is clever and bright. God help us! I disliked 'Startlight' aged 11.

Review from The Telegraph.<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Anthony Van Laast's choreography is energetic rather than inspired, but it is at least blessed with with a sense of spectacle and vigour. The highlight comes during the wondrous candyfloss pop of Shakalaka Baby (a solid gold hit if I ever heard one) in which the whole cast is drenched by fountains. But look and listen out, too, for the trance-like Chaiyya Chaiyya, sung in Hindi and with the young cast performing with bubbling vitality on a revolving wall.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2002/06/21/btcs21.xml&sSheet=/arts/2002/06/22/ixstageleft.html" TARGET=_blank> <B> MORE </B> </A>