June 17th - June 23rd 2002
Sunday Rissoles
Saturday Chooze ooze
Friday Engerland
Thursday Reviews
Wednesday N179
Tuesday Bombay Dreams
Monday -
Sunday 23rd June 2002
Alexander Lukashenko, President of Belarus, is keen to end his country's ten years of independence and return to mother Russia - understandably, given that Belarusia's economy is approximately 3 per cent of its comparatively rich neighbour.
President Putin, on the other hand, seems less than keen on reunification. During a visit to Minsk, he summed up his views with admirable pithiness: "Let's keep the rissoles and the flies separate."
Saturday 22nd June 2002
Sportswriting, you gotta love it:
Stripped to the waist, Beckham led the team on a lap of honour yesterday and you could feel the goodwill oozing from every seat.
Not a dry seat in the stadium, presumably.
Friday 21st June 2002
1030am: God help me, I even read the sports pages this morning (for the first and last time, I think.)
As a result, I can offer a suitably conspiratorial explanation for the Mexican referee's mysterious despatch of that nice Italian Rinaldinio this morning.
In 1986, apparently, the then Brazilian Fifa president swung the tournament away from drug-torn Colombia in favour of Mexico, who had hosted it just 16 years previously. Mexico have been perceived as endebted to Brazil ever since; hence, perhaps, Rizo's overtly anti-Brazil move this morning.
Oh yeah, and anybody wanna give me odds on a press conference announcement from Seaman when he arrives home?
Okay, that's quite enough for the next four years. There's only so much testosterone a boy can give.
9am: I don't think I've ever consciously watched an entire game of football in my life. Not this time, either, given I woke up at eight o'clock. But now I'm jumping up and down in my seat, gibbering like a chimp. It feels so butch. Wonder if there's any beer in the fridge?
Thursday 20th June 2002
Bombay Dreams opened last night, to mixed reviews.
The Guardian, whilst affecting a somewhat lofty tone ("Bombay Dreams is at its best when it sticks close to the formula it derides") and actively disliking "Meera Syal's clumsy, over-plotted book" nonetheless finds the show "deliriously dotty" offering "constant optical pleasures".
The Times praises the show's "personable young leads" and "fertile musical imagination" but professes itself deeply disappointed by "fatal waywardness of tone in Steven Pimlott's production" concluding: "Postmodern irony? No, just miscalculation."
The Independent has similar doubts about the "uncertain tone, an identity crisis that isn't much of a drama" and, indeed, finds nothing to like in the show at all. The music is "routine oriental stuff, the sort of thing one would hear in an old movie behind a snake charmer" and the two leads are dismissed as "perfectly adequate" but "obviously chosen for their looks and physical grace rather than any acting or singing talent".
(More reviews summarised at the BBCi site.)
There have also been press profiles of Meera Syal, who wrote the book, and Don Black, who wrote the lyrics, as well as a piece by Andrew Lloyd Webber, the producer, about his admiration for A R Rahman, who wrote the music.
In The Independent, Philip Hensher writes an interesting piece about the guilty pleasures of liking Bollywood movies, pointing out that there's more, much more, to Indian cinema than Chore Chore Chupke Chupke: "..rather like being told by a foreigner that his great love for English film-making rested on that great classic, Carry On Camping."
Plus, the final word, a thrilled description of the premiere by the Press Trust of India.
(My review here.)
Wednesday 19th June 2002
Nice to see the blogerati out in force at The Retro Bar last night, bidding a fond final farewell to the blogger formerly known as Dave-o.
The five-hour saga of smut that followed for me bears no repetition here, but I'll give you the highlights: Bar Code, the N179 to Waltham Cross, beer, a drunken youth, dog-shit and cock - not necessarily in that order.
Gilbert and George, the household gods of Hoxton, apparently addressed the Royal Geographic Society recently, touching on the regeneration of Shoreditch as they did so.
Their local public lavatory has been turned into a restaurant: "It's wonderful - you can eat in or take away."
To which George replied: "You always could."
Tuesday 18th June 2002
The idea of making a West End musical out of the Bollywood film industry is so neat, so right, that Shaftesbury Avenue must surely be ringing with the sound of overweight impresarios attempting to kick themselves.
Above and beyond the obvious appeal of instant romance, a familiar yet exotic locale and screenloads of song and dance spectacle, Bollywood provides the chance for a cunning writer to have it both ways: go over the top and you're satirising the familiar improbabilities of the movies; cut beneath the excess and you're providing a knowing commentary on the clash between truth and fiction.
Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy shrugs and says 'That's Bollywood'.
The only alarming thought about such a scenario from a West End producer's point of view are the rocky shoals of political correctness. Do we really dare to hold a mirror up to the cultural shallows of Britain's most-respected ethnic community?
Judging by chortles that swept through the multi-ethnic audience at Thursday's show, it seems we do - with rainbow-coloured spangled diamanté knobs on. I can't remember ever seeing such a rich racial mix at a West End theatre before.
This new audience should more than compensate the box-office for the show's lack of child-appeal; Lloyd Webber musicals, by accident or design, have hitherto always tended towards the anodyne, but this is a show for adults - with a plot that raises all sorts of questions one imagines parents not wanting to answer on the long drive home.
For one thing it has (a West End first) a chorus of eunuchs, the leader of whom has the temerity to fall for the show's hero even before he takes his shirt off.
True enough, the castratiji do not exactly throw their skirts over their heads as part of their act (as they sometimes do on the actual streets of Bombay) - it's not that adult a show.
But they do make their situation admirably clear in the first big number, threatening passers-by:
"but if you refuse us, you'll face adversity,
even though we're not the men we used to be."
The lyrics and book of Bombay Dreams, written by no less than Don Black and Meera Syal of Goodness Gracious Me fame, decorate the basic crooked-capitalists-threaten-slum-culture plot with a constant twinkle of grown-up cynicism, such as when the hero is dismissed as 'arm-candy' at a first-night party, or the song where the second-best villain decides it's safer to stay in jail pleading "Don't Release Me."
Whilst the composer of Cats and Evita claims no input into the songs of Bombay Dreams, his influence is occasionally evident in the show's lavish orchestration; thankfully, however, the enchanting sub-continental blend of jaunty percussion and floaty wails prevents the music from falling into the opera-pastiche that that all too often characterises the school of Lloyd Webber.
Which is just as well, since (one of the show's few failings) the attractive energetic Anglo-Indian cast don't seem to have voices large enough to entirely fill a theatre.
When all's said and done, though, this show is less about music than it is about spectacle. The gee-whiz ramps'n'skates gimmickry of Starlight Express, previously at this theatre, has been replaced with more traditional theatre engineering, executed on a grand scale.
Dancers parade down revolving staircases that fill the stage. Giant posters drop from the flies. A classic trap offers dramatic entrances for heroes and exits for villains. An enormous bulldozer (well, okay, part of an enormous bulldozer) threatens to destroy the homes of the slums.
Best of all, in true Bollywood fashion, the show uses a lot of water: a central reflecting pool, leaping fountains and - in an excellent coup de théatre - a sudden shower of rain.
Keeping the balance between this endless spectacle and an intelligent plot-line is a difficult path to tread and, in the second half, it's true that the excesses go, as excesses tend to, over the top.
The villain's dramatic escape dangling from a helicopter rope-ladder raises a giggle, as does the proto-kung-fu punch-up - but do we really need three riots in as many minutes?
That's the beauty of Bollywood, of course: a cinema of excess. So all the more credit to the show's creators that the closing number... ah, but I won't spoil it for you.Check out tonight's Omnibus (BBC1 1035) or, better yet, try and get a ticket to go see for yourself.
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