Usher Nonsense # 47 – Bombay Dreams
BOMBAY DREAMS - Music by A R Rahman; lyrics by Don Black; book by Meera
Syal and Thomas Meehan; based on an idea by Shekhar Kapur and Andrew Lloyd
Webber; directed by Steven Pimlott
WITH: Manu Narayan (Akaash), Anisha Nagarajan (Priya), Madhur Jaffrey
(Shanti), Ayesha Dharker (Rani), Sriram Ganesan (Sweetie), Marvin L. Ishmael
(Madan), Deep Katdare (Vikram).
Lights - Hugh Vanstone; Sound - Mick Potter; Sets and costumes - Mark
Thompson; Choreography - Anthony Van Laast and Farah Khan.
At the Broadway Theater, 1681 Broadway, at 53rd Street.
Bombay's PR says it is a Bollywood movie adapted to the stage. I have never seen a
Bollywood movie. I'm told they are filled with music and dancing and a lot of water.
This musical has all three, which delighted some of the people in the audience who
screamed and cheered as the fountains erupted onstage. The PR also says this is a story
about the caste system. Would that it were. Instead they put in a little caste system,
some slum, a lot of Bollywood, some Ganesh, some mansions, some greed, some evil
and lots of music. It reminds me of the way I used to cook. I threw in everything
instead of following a recipe. Everything cancels out everything. My food came out
tasting beige.
Young man wants to get out of the slum and decides to become a movie star in order to
accomplish this. We all know how easy that is. So ba-da-boom he becomes a star. He
takes up with the hot starlet of the moment who encourages him to forsake his past (he
is an untouchable) and his family. He then falls in love with a woman who is supposed
to have a backbone and a brain, but who is oblivious to the fact that her fiancé is a crook
who makes his money taking over slums for development. With this money he is
financing our heroine's dream of making films that mean something. She hires our hero
to be in the movie, admits to us that she is in love with him, and then spurns him for no
reason we can understand, except it makes for a couple of good solos. In the end the
hero sees the error of his ways, rescues his slum from destruction and the woman he
loves from marrying the wrong man.
Am I keeping you awake? OK - So I know this is a musical, and musicals are not
known for complicated plots. Personally, however, I am tired of seeing stories about
young men who run amok and then return to save their damsels as well as the day in
general. It's tiresome. It's unimaginative. It's limiting. And we keep feeding it to
ourselves over and over. The female characters in this story lack any spark, with the
exception of the character called Sweetie. Sweetie is the best friend of our hero. She is
also a man. (One of the few points of interest in this story is the inclusion of hijra,
eunuchs who are beggars as well as bestowers of good luck.)
The best thing about this show is looking at the audience and seeing faces of many
colors. New York theatre audiences are usually 99 and 44/100's % pure white. Let's
just hope some of this audience will fall in love with theatre and keep on coming back in
spite of this production. I will.
© 2004 Tulis McCall
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