Posts

Showing posts from 2015

The Bestseller She Wrote

Image
I am reviewing  ‘The Bestseller She Wrote’  by Ravi Subramanian as a part of the biggest  Book Review  Program   for  Indian Bloggers . Participate now to get free books! The book was well paced and well written. And certainly, Ravi Subramanian is one of India's better English writers. The language flows easily for Ravi and the story is viable. I must mention that I was able to complete the book in roughly 3 hours, which is generally a praise to the writer than to the reader. The characters play along to our author's tunes. Reactions are real, actions are melodramatic and are worthy verses of a crime thriller. I felt the characters though, could do with better building. Everyone's back story is too short and too light so some of them don't make an impact on you. A deeper understanding of why Maya left her job "for" Aditya is very important to understand how she reacts at later points in the book. How the friendship between Sanjay and Aditya evo

Four minutes and Twelve seconds

I watched Four Minutes and Twelve Seconds at the Trafalgar Studios and give it a 3.5/5 rating. Superbly contemporary, the story line is too obvious and yet too real. It's so obvious that the suspense is not really a suspense but then again you wish it wasn't too obvious because we invent fiction to make us feel like better human beings. You hope for the mother's sake that her son didn't do anything wrong. Then, you hope the mother would call the cops on her son for mistreating his girlfriend. Then you hope the wife would give up her husband's indiscriminate act of uploading the video online because he was proud of his son. You hope the girl gets justice. But it doesn't happen. Everyone calls the girl a liar because she is poor and not polished enough. Everyone believes the boy because he is economically better and scores well in exams. His parents protect his future and hold their marriage together for his sake. And the girl gets on with her life as best as sh

Roaring Trade

I watched Roaring Trade at Park Theatre and give it a 4/5 rating. Well executed, fast paced and exciting. Hilarious and thoughtful. And the actors were good, especially the teenage boy, and set changes were impeccable. That's why a 4/5. But having said all that, the story is terribly outdated. What spoon does got him fired in the play. In today's reality, he would be suspended while internal compliance teams and regulators look into the case and after fact finding, his case goes to court and most likely he to jail. The general sense of people and workspace is also about a decade old. Perceptions don't change!

A Fine Balance

Image
The story is sad. So sad that I was depressed when I closed the book. Depressed not just because the story is sad but that the story ended and that it ended on a low point. It could have easily turned sunny way up but it didn't. It made me so unhappy I wondered what is the point of the story, except to leave your reader feeling helpless and insecure about the future and about humanity. After you have absorbed the story and lamented over it, you start to look beyond the main story and to the backdrop. The descriptive nature of the book paints you a picture of India in the 1970s in front of your eyes.  The prologues give you the history of each protagonist and with them of different cultures and social nitty-gritties. It unravels the Parsi families and their modern culture that is still constrained to their singular community. In Dina, you see the young spirited potential of modern middle class women that is shunned and choked by the patriarchal society. The story of Ishv

People places and things

Image
I watched People, Places and Things at the National Theatre and I give it a 4/5 rating. Such fabulous acting, I really thought Denise Gough would bag all the best female actor awards this year. ( That didn't happen, instead going to Nicole Kidman for some remarkably good acting in a limited character in Photograph 51, though mostly because it was Nicole Kidman I think). I personally don't know anyone who went to rehab so it took me a while to get into the play but once I did, I was locked in. The journey that Denise takes on is difficult and mentally stressful, especially when everyone around her had written her off completely. There is also the physical element of withdrawal that breaks her down, her face expressing excruciating pain.  The play is perfect because it makes us feel hopeful at the end. it shows you that with a little bit of help, anyone can do it. But that help is hard to find. All that the play has is Denise Gough. Other characters come and g

Martyr

I watched Martyr at the Unicorn Theatre and I give it a 3.5/5 rating. A very interesting play and very contemporary theme (though it's actually a really old thence because people don't change much). A young boy in high school takes a sudden interest in the Bible and follows it literally, becoming more and more regressive. His mother pleads to the school to help him see reason. And his science teacher who believes in science and rejects religion becomes his biggest rival even though all she wants to do is help him. The subtle undertones of sexist remarks that the principal passes on the rather good-looking science teacher, the general sentiment of our fanatic that a woman's place is at home and the way the tables are turned on the teacher shows that laws may change but justice is hard to find any people don't change. It addresses religious fanatical ideologies but doesn't give us much hope. I'm not sure what the writer wanted to say when at the end the teacher

The Hairy Ape

I watched the #HairyApe  at The Old Vic and give it a 4.5/5 rating. It's a bit out of date I suppose. Some what like Everyman I watched at National Theatre. The classism portrayed is so everyday like that the impact is far reduced. I wonder, 20 years from now, would please think the same about the so called contemporary issues of today? The play was done flawlessly with multiple set changes that I did not expect from an old play in a West End Theatre. The steam engine room of the ship had a camaraderie of the working class. The singing tunes of manual labour shine on to the dreams the industrial revolution gave people and the eventual strength it provided in their musings questioning elitism. Acting was good in general, though not too many actors had large roles. Most of the play is just our protagonist who an aristocratic spoilt brat sees covered in coal and screams. I thought he was really good looking covered in coal and screaming and shouting out propaganda of how it is he a

Photograph 51

Interesting it was, to understand the politics and the competition of the research world. But it was nothing like what it was made out to be for popularity. On the news, it was all about feminism and how Rosalind Franklin lost the opportunity to be the one to discover the double helix structure of DNA because she was a woman and wasn't taken seriously by her male counterparts and that her work was stolen. If anything, the play showed it the other way around. She didn't take her counterparts seriously enough to collaborate with them. But she also didn't get involved in the race and she didn't mind losing a race she didn't participate in. She cared about finding the truth and she was happy with that. True, the theoretic structure of Watson and Crick would have been worthless without her physiographic proof and also probably inspired by her potentially stolen photographs. But she didn't believe in theories. She was most certainly, not a feminist and I think she wou

1984

4/5 rating 1984 | The Playhouse One thing with old West End theatres is that they are all cramped, tiny and have bad views. So I'm generally not fond of West End theatres. This one was the same. So obviously the set was bare and the little furniture in it changed frequently for a "set change ". And when a completely different set was required, it was telecast on the screen which looked to me like it was pre-shot. But at the very end, the entire set changes completely. That was really well done. I had not read the book before I watched the play. So to me, the first 30 mins were very confusing. I didn't understand that it was a book shop and I didn't understand whether the people around Winston were real or if they were living inside his head. Though now I know that it was Winston who was living inside peoples' heads who were all sitting together and reading his diary. At least that's what I think. It's a deeply disturbing play. What is mo

Simon Evans In The Money

3.5/5 rating Simon Evans In The Money | Soho theatre It was a very different comedy night; I give him that. What do you get when you mix money, economy and a very British man? House prices! To be fair that was only a part of it. Generally speaking it was very British humour. Everyone laughed a lot. I laughed some times. The jokes I felt, were not jokes but extremely long winded explanations and people laughed at his explanations and I couldn't understand why. Thankfully at least he didn't go total left and misinform people like all other comedians. If anything he went total right. All his explanations were correct and normal which is why I didn't find them funny. I also found the extremely long winded sentences funny for the first few times but having to listen for more than an hour with every sentence going at least 3 mins long was a bit tiring. And I seemingly dozed of mid sentence to wake up after its over and everyone laughed. All in all, I suppose he was funny and

Shadowland

2/5 rating Shadowland It seemed like a great idea. To go to a theatre show that's about a play on lights and shadows (see what I did there? Play haha). It was good, when they did their psychedelic stuff. I could have watched it all day listening to pink floyd. But the actual stuff was crazy. I never understood why the girl becomes a dog. It's not even that hard. And the girl nearing the end of the show, gets topless for no apparent reason. It's not much of a difference considering that to begin with the girl and her parents were just maniquins in underwear who suddenly become parents and people when they wear clothes. It's probably to show that they are not using props to create the shadows. Some times they do and they show you the props. The dreamy sequences with all the well built guys with knees caps and in underwear, and the one guy who can compete with Undertaker is not too bad. I probably didn't understand it because I was a little too bored to care. It&

It's a song! It's a movie! ...

... No! It's SIRO-A !!! 4/5 rating SIRO-A | Soho Theatre These guys are amazing. They use technology to the fullest extent. They had a projector feeding in lights and colours. They also used it to create clones of themselves. They had a live projector to create a large scary being out of the little guy sitting in one corner. They had a camera that helped produce a song live, even though nobody sang it. They made a music video with audience dancing even though nobody danced. They had a bit of a laser show. They had some live DJs too. What more could you want !!!

Bears in Space

Image
5/5 Bears in Space | Soho Theatre Hilarious as hell!! Now now, it's not really a play with a traditional story or sets so a high rating may not be warranted. But they wanted to make us laugh and they did. It's a 4 member team called Collapsing Horse that told us an absolutely random story of two bears in space using all kinds of random home made props and puppets in a cosy setting in Jerrwood Upstairs. The story was so random that you laugh, and then you laugh some more. A story keeper tells us the story of two bears traveling through space along with the frozen body of their dead captain. They have no idea what their mission is, and when they run out of energy they must go to the nearby industrial city country planet system of Metrotopia. Metrotopia is known for its evil dictator, crazy man with daddy issues who imprisons anyone and everyone. And of course at the end the bears save themselves and save the day, helped moderately by the spirit of the captain. We book

Motherf***er with the Hat

Image
4.5/5 rating The Motherf**ker with The Hat | National Theatre Did I ever have obscenities in my blog? Don't think so. This time though I can't help it because there is one in the title of the play - The Motherf***er with the Hat. Did the play need an obscenity in its title? Probably not, but I'm sure it got a lot of attention for it. The play itself has a lot of obscenities but it doesn't sound weird or angry, just hilarious. It's currently playing at the National Theatre in Lyttelton. We got cheap but amazing tickets because we bought on the day the bookings opened, right in front on the stage, close enough to see every single expression. The sets were not very special but immaculately done. Every time there is a set change the walls come from above and the floor from behind. There were only 3 sets but very detailed. The story is so complicatedly simple it could have been a soap opera. There was nothing new, nothing extraordinary or nothing outr

The Elephant Man

Image
2.5/5 rating The Elephant Man | Royal Haymarket Theatre We watched The Elephant Man in the Royal Haymarket Theatre. It was weirdly surreal because the theatre is so old and maintained that way. The play is set in 19th century London and the sets were simple and the use of lights basic. So when the lights were out and the actors were on the stage you felt like you were transported back in time. I suppose that was the intended effect. Now before we go any further, let me just copy and paste the synopsis from the play's website: Based on the real life of Joseph Merrick,  The Elephant Man  tells the story of 19th-century London man Merrick (Bradley Cooper)  who became a star of the traveling freak show circuit. When the renowned Dr. Treves (Alessandro Nivola)  takes Merrick under his care, he is astonished by the man’s brilliant intelligence, unshakable faith and, most of all, his resounding desire for love and understanding. He introduces Merrick to the beautiful actr

Switzerland

Image
Can't get any more touristy than that. Following the massive success of the movie Dilwale Dulhania Le Jaayeinge in India, Switzerland is a dream location. So when we were making plans to go there, I really didn't feel up to it. Now that I've been there, I'm glad I did. I have never seen anything like it. We landed in Basel on Saturday morning and needed to get to Luzern. Before we took a train, we quickly went up the Munster (or the cathedral) to get some views of River Rheine and the city. Here is a picture. Soon we reached Luzern. There is a free walking tour of the city starting at the station that we wanted to take. But unfortunately we got the timing wrong and we missed it. It's at 1.15 pm on most days. We weren't too disappointed though, it is not advisable to go walking around in the middle of the day under the sun, when it's 30 degrees. And we also woke up real early for the flight so we slept for a couple of hours and then explored the c

The Trail

Image
4/5 rating The Trail | Young Vic I didn't know anything about the play before I walked in. I had an amazing experience. The stage is one largish conveyor belt and the sets keep changing as the belt moves. The seating is on either side of the conveyor belt. We got lucky. We sat in the front row. While this undoubtedly gave us a great experience, even without it would have still been good. The play is based on a book by Kafka. It is about a society ruled by law where the law is ultimate and as the dialogue goes, everything belongs to the court. From stealing his clothes to stealing his life, K sees the power of the court that wouldn't even tell him what he is guilty of but hold him on trial. In a sense the conveyor belt shows that K is caught in a process that he can't fight. Rory Kinnear plays K and bears it all till he crumbles down. And when he does you see that while his fingers are shaking visibly for the benefit of the audience, his character is shaking

Kafka on the Shore

4.5/5 rating Kafka on the Shore | Barbican My first response as soon as the play started? Oh Damn! It's nothing to do with the play. I just realised that the play is in Japanese. There were subtitles, or serftitles as they are called in theatre, in English on two large screens placed at the top corners of the stage. Given the expensive nature of theatre and the number of times we tend to go, we mostly buy cheap tickets (theatre monkey is your friend). So while we still had a great view of the stage, the serftitles were not exactly in line with our view and we had to keep switching the eyes from the board to the stage. I should have researched the play a bit more. Ignore all the above. No question that it was authentic. Kafka on the Shore is a book by Haruki Murakami. I haven't read it. I wanted to watch it without any prior impressions. The Ninagawa theatre company had adapted it into a Japanese play and is currently touring in London.  I must say it was beau

Everyman

Image
2/5 rating Everyman | National Theatre I believe it is an old 15 th century play adapted to modern times.  The opening scene with the cleaning lady and the first scene with Everyman partying with his friends on this 40th birthday was done ravishingly well and very much in today's times indeed. But that's where the modernity stops. Much of the play about Everyman's reckoning is mostly old school. May be the god fearing among us would agree with it. But it's a dialogue from my grandmother's life, if not from the middle ages. The dialogues were rhyming a bit too much for the modern era. It was the Olivier theatre and the use of sets was minimal. There was so much more that could have been done with the sets - with the party that is turning dark and his fear, with the streets when he sleeps with the homeless, with the execution of everyone but not Everyman. The execution of the execution was so juvenile that it was almost like a school play. At

Election plays from the first week of May

I've watched NewsRevue before and I loved it. It's a series of comedy sketches on current affairs and they make minor changes to their content almost every week so within a couple of months it's nearly entirely new and sometimes even the cast is new. They are always playing at Canal Cafe Theatre which is a small theatre space above a pub. So we went to watch them again the weekend before the UK general elections for all the election mockery.  It was truly hilarious. I cracked up so much, I don't think there can be one favourite.  Most of the sketches were about how Dave Cam owns the world or how Nicola is slowly conquering it. The others are just interacting each with their own typical characters. They didn't leave the Americans out either. Hil-ary was strikingly awesome that I could actually picture Hillary Clinton being on stage herself.  They had a few other sketches involving Katie Holmes, the birth of the princess, etc. Even though I watched many other comedy s

Lake District

Image
It was definitely beautiful but certainly not as laid back as I thought it would be, may be it was just timing. Firstly, on a normal day there is a direct train from London to Windermere that's roughly 3 hours and a bit. For us it took more than 6 hours due to engineering works. Secondly, it was the Easter weekend, the first big holiday after winter. Thirdly, it was supposed to be raining but in the last minute the weather turned and it was brilliant sunny weekend bringing in a lot of unplanned holiday makers from an hour away.  Any case, we thought the same and woke up at 11 thinking if it rains too much we won't make the effort. But it was looking al right so we left at 2. A tube ride and three train rides later we reached Windermere. It was already dark and it took us a while to get to our B&B so that was that. Our B&B was a small cute family run place like most B&Bs are. Ross, who runs it, was extremely helpful and he is as local as anyone can get

Tenerife

Image
That's the place with the British sun! Truly! It follows British Summer Time even when clearly it does not need to save any daylight. To be honest, the island looks pretty bad from the sky. I was expecting a tropical island. My bad. It's not a tropical island. It's a volcanic island. It only grows shrubs and bushes, and not beautiful palm trees. But once you land and are transported off the highways, you will go into a tourist haven and the world is transformed. Luxurious resorts full of innovatively designed pools overlooking the sea with the mountains behind you, beautiful golden sand beaches with sunbeds in the sand and jet skies in the sea, and tonnes of seafood. That's Tenerife for you. We took the first flight out of London and it's a rather long flight so we landed around half past ten. We made our way to our hotel through a network of buses. We couldn't check-in immediately so we thought we can take some time to get there and get a view of the pla

Feminism is in Vogue

Yes, feminism is in vogue. It's the talk of the town and the hottest topic these days. That's a good thing of course. The more you talk about it, the more awareness you raise and the more people strive for women empowerment. A women's magazine would generally cater to women, but all women are not alike and hence, they tend to concentrate on the most reachable section of the population. While I have no doubt that all kinds of women read all likes of magazines and watch all kinds of TV shows, I'm going to make some generalisations which I'm sure many of you would scream and shout saying I'm stereotyping. Well guess what, stereotypes exist because statistics say so and as long as I'm not stereotyping a single person, I think I'm alright. I digress. Women's magazines, I don't think have many working women as their readers. Working women may read them, but not fully or not with the same vigour as stay at home women or young teenagers do, only becau

Shakespeare

Today I start a new label - The Stage. I remember reading Merchant of Venice and many abridged versions of many Shakespearean plays many years ago, Hamlet included. (I'm writing this in a cab and I looked through my window when a pub named The Shakespeare passed me by. Talk about signs.) You see, I never really liked Shakespeare. Love is supposed to be unconditional and selfless according to Bollywood. Shakespearean love is selfish and destructive. When K made plans to watch one of my favourite actors as Othello, I refused to join in because my dislike for Shakespeare overshadowed how much I like Adrian Lester. Then. Now. I regret missing that performance. Not only did I miss watching him as Othello, I also missed Rory Kienner's award winning performance as Iago. And, I also regret missing Shakespeare's Othello. Haider is the reason. Haider is extraordinary. There is another blogpost describing how extraordinary it is. But for now, this statement suffices. Haider

Radiant Vermin

5/5 rating Radiant Vermin | Soho Theatre Unwavering performance. Period. There is no set. There are no props. There is just one light change. There is good story but not strong enough by itself. And there are but two actors. Actually, there are three actors but two of them holds it together for most of the play. As I said, the story is good. It's a darkly funny story and full of surprising metaphors. Gill and Oliver, a young couple from the Generation Rent, find themselves with a free home when they never thought they might own a home. As it turns out the home needs no money for renovations, only the sacrifice of homeless people or 'renovators'. And as the locality is gentrified with the number of homeless people reducing and the net worth of the neighbours increasing, Gill and Oliver find guilt clawing at them but convince each other they are doing it for their children. Wouldn't you do the same for yours? They couldn't have given a better metaphor for gent

3 winters

3/5 rating 3 Winters | National Theatre K and I watched 3 Winters at Lyttleton before we watched Dara. But it just took me a long time to collect my thoughts on the unfamiliar.  For most part, the set is just one living room, except shown across three winters, decades apart in Zagreb, Croatia. The play alternates between these three winters, one set in early communist era post the second world war when Rose takes possession of this house that the rest of the play is set in. She takes the house where her mother used to work as a maid and who was turned away with the then two year old Rose, to spite fate. The play then goes forward to when Croatia is in turmoil during the fall of the Soviet Union fighting for its independence then forward again to the privatisation of Croatia and the equality of all replaced with capitalism and it's exploitation. The play alternates between these three winters and the same living room is altered every time to the detail to maintain the diffe

Fireworks

5/5 rating Fireworks | Soho Theatre It's a Palestinian play adapted in English called Al'ab Nariya or The Fireworks by Dalia Taha. Let me begin by saying that I was so shaken and overwhelmed that even after the play it took me a few minutes to find my bearings. The stage was very small at Jerwood upstairs, and the audience was small too but every seat was taken and people squeezed in to accommodate more. That's one cosy setting. So when they showed us living rooms on stage it felt like were all inside the living rooms making the play that much more intense. The play focuses on two families living in a building in a war struck Palestine. Not that they wanted war. They just happened to be living somewhere where war happened to break out and now they have blackout tape and bombs dropping everywhere. While all the neighbours are leaving because of the bombing, these families haven't yet. Simple stories of simple families caught in the extraordinary. This hea

Dara

Image
3.5/5 rating Dara | National Theatre I'm very ignorant about history and that's something I've been trying to correct but the vastness of it all is a bit overwhelming. So when K and I booked tickets to a play called Dara, it was only because we found the marketing summary interesting - that Dara was one of Aurangzeb's older brothers and that it's a Pakistani play adapted in English for the NT. The only history we knew was that Aurangzeb imprisoned his father and killed his brothers to ascend to the throne. When I mentioned to my mother, who has a bachelor's in Indian history, that I was going to a play titled Dara, she told me he was a poet and a painter, and a patron of Islam art in the golden Mughal era. With the downfall of the Mughal empire not long after Aurangzeb, there were many discussions of an alternative history of the country had Dara become the ruler. So what I originally expected, a little known and well imagined rivalry between broth