The problem with inheriting the faith on April 6, 2020You may have heard the axiom ‘easy come easy go’ associated with inheritance and even love, which is predicated on the notion that you fail to value what you get easily, thereby, you loose it. The same predicament lies with inheriting a faith or a belief system. Be it money or love or faith, you […]
Hip-hop dance underpinned with a moving message on February 26, 2020Wow! “Message in a Bottle” is baffling, delightful and meaningful. The mere thought of dancing to Sting’s music is troubling at first; one can imagine a hip-hop dance performance to Jay Z or even Taylor Swift’s music, but “how do you dance to Sting’s music?” It is a hurdle that you overcome the moment the […]
Salman Ali — a budding qawwal with a euphonious voice on February 20, 2020We often think of classical music as a dying genre, which will end with the climax of certain iconic voices. And then someone comes along to prove us wrong. With pop music toping the charts, music genres such as opera and qawaali do tend to take a back seat but not forgotten. Most contestants in […]
‘Umrao Jaan Ada’ — a musical that brings Lucknow to London on February 14, 2020“Umrao Jaan Ada” is a household name in the subcontinent. Actually, it is a desi version of the courtesan in La Boheme on whom the entire story revolves around for the length and breadth of the play. She was born to a humble family in Faizabad who was then kidnapped in 1840, imprisoned, and then […]
‘Kunene & the King’ — a play about apartheid, race and death on February 4, 2020I was not expecting “Kunene & the King,” a Royal Shakespeare Company’s production, to be this dense; I imagined it would be a play about the apartheid that is loosely tied to the works of Shakespeare, but it was much more than that. The master’s works can fit in anywhere and for that very reason […]
Cirque du Soliel’s ‘Luzia’ is wowing on January 27, 2020When you are set to watch a Cirque du Soliel performance, you know what you are getting into. It is not that it is predictable, but it is the wow factor in each act irrespective of the theme of the show. You know that there will be mind-being acrobats, terrific stunts, brilliant dancers and superb […]
‘La Boheme’ — a memorable performance at the ROH on January 24, 2020Richard Jones‘ La Boheme grips your attention well before a single note is sung at the Royal Opera House (ROH); even before the lights turn off and the conductor appears before the audience, snow starts falling from the Latin quarters of Paris where this Giacomo Puccini’s classic is set-it feels marvellous! Even though the story […]
‘Touching the Void’ — a thrilling mountaineering memoir that’ll give you goosebumps on January 22, 2020You may have heard that anything is possible in theatre in as far as the audience is willing to indulge in the fantasy you want them chase. But you have to showcase a convincing fantasy; it has to be a gripping, thrilling, and exciting to seduce the senses of the audience to stick to the […]
Vice and virtue in William Shakespeare’s plays on January 21, 2020I recently watched two plays that reminded me of Professor Martin Lings, who studied Shakespeare through the sacred lens and opined that the playwright would be quite agreeable with the Sufi school of thought and he was serious about it to the extent that he authored a book arguing his case. To be fair, the […]
A saintly courtesan — 25 years of ‘La Traviata’ at the ROH on January 14, 2020The Royal Opera House celebrates the 25th year anniversary of director Richard Eyre’s “La Triviata,” in English: the fallen woman. And the singing is simply stunning. During the interval, a fellow opera critic cynically said to me that this production is always the same. Whilst I am alright with the idea of innovation in classical […]