An English Christmas...

Right from Agatha Christie to Charles Dickens, everyone raves about an English Christmas. Just to what find out what all the hype was about, I decided to spend Christmas in London this year.

Here are some of the things I really enjoyed and hence have decided to include in the ''must-do'' list.

Watch a Pantomime

A Pantomime is a musical-comedy mostly performed during the christmas and New year season. I saw the ''Sleeping beauty''. I was initially skeptical when I learnt that the show was nearly for 3 hours and hardly anyone had come there without a kid. But it turned out to be 3 hours of pure and unadulterated fun.

The actors were brilliant and whats more they all had radiant smiles and really seemed to enjoy what they were doing. The show was very interactive and the audience was allowed to boo the villian (-ess), sigh with the princess when she falls in love and wish for a ''happily ever after'' ending. The crew threw chocolates into the crowd, came running through spraying everyone with water guns, had gorillas that scared the living daylights out of some kids, made the audience sing and dance with them...ohh I felt I was 13 and was taking part in a school annual day !

The best part was when a couple of the really small kids were called on stage and were asked questions by the court jester (CJ). Here are some of the ''brilliant'' answers

CJ: Where do you live ?

Kid1 (after a lot of thinking): Home

Kid2 (after a lot of looking around): hmm...

CJ: never heard better answers !

CJ: what did you get for christmas ?

Kid1: hmm...nothing

Kid2 (with a sheepish smile): hmm...forgot

CJ: well, between the two of you, you are keeping the christmas spirit alive !

Enjoy the Christmas lights

Walking through Oxford street and Regent Street on Christmas Day was amazing inspite of the biting cold weather (click on the photo for a larger version).

For someone coming from Munich, where christmas decorations are confined mostly to the city centre, seeing rows and rows of lights in all possible shapes and colors was just too festive to miss. Going on Christmas day would ensure that you will not get clobbered by crazy shoppers (its God's day, noone shops much to the relief of most men)

Eat Christmas pudding

If there is something worth eating in the English cuisine, its surely the Christmas pudding. Made with nuts, raisins and alcohol (mostly cognac), it is definitely a dessert worth gaining a few pounds for (atleast thats my excuse for now) !

Do some ''Boxing day'' Shopping

All stores have a massive sale on Boxing day. I saw items that had 70% discount. Well, yes, you should have had some experience in Ranganathan street to combat the crazy women (and sometimes men) in the crowded stores and if you are prudent, you will shop online or visit some stores away from Central London where the chances of you being mobbed are less likely !

Visit a Castle

I went to the Windsor castle and was pleasantly surprised by very few visitors.

Since most people use the christmas vacation to catch up with families, sightseeing places like Castles are hardly crowded and this is a once-in-a-year opportunity for a highly touristy place like London.

Besides this I also had fun with a school friend, a college friend, a distant cousin, nearly emptied Saravana Bhavan in Eastham, saw Manmadhan Ambu in Cineworld (and felt jealous about how desi movies were screened and advertised just like English movies - for someone in a city where only 2 theatres screen English movies and desi movies are confined to one show, this is a big deal!) and ate a looooooot of really good desi food (to an extent that I should live only on water for the rest of the year!)

An English Christmas in London is a lot of fun, an English Christmas in London with near and dear ones is super duper fun !

Copyright for Pantomime photo: Odos Entertainment

Tango the night away

A long time ago, Ashok and I had decided that we should go to the theatre (not the movies) often and try and catch at least 4 shows a year. This resolution was after we saw a great Beethoven show in February this year.

Yesterday morning, as we were lazily sipping our coffee, Ashok reminded me of this decision and said we were falling way behind and there were only 2 months left in the year. So we quickly googled (yeah, its a verb now and where have you been??) and I was shocked to see that there were 140 different events happening in Munich that day. After a quick perusal, we decided on the Tanguera and were glad to see that there were still tickets available.

The show was for 80 minutes and to my surprise, without a break. It was more or less like a musical with a storyline and all emotions - love, anger, passion, anguish - were expressed solely by tango dance moves. Although it was an age old tragic love story (boy loves girl at first sight, girl works for a cruel club owner, club owner beats up boy, girl sold as a call girl, boy rescues her, they have a brief moment of happiness, club owner kills them both), the execution was amazing. The music, the costumes, the lighting (that totally fit the mood), the scene settings (which were changed at a lightning speed) and above all the dancers from Buenos Aires were all brilliant.

What was interesting to note was when the story began with people coming from Spain to Argentina, there was a dance piece where they celebrate their life in a new land and the dance had tapping steps similar to Flamenco clearly showing (what I considered) the Spanish influence in Tango Argentino.

The cabaret performances when the girl is stuck as a ''show girl'' were a tad monotonous and lacked variety but I guess not many people will complain when the long legged girls tango in skimpy costumes. This is the only part that makes me retract one star from the otherwise 5-star performance.

If you are even remotely interested in Tango, you would enjoy it immensely. But be aware that this is a show for adults and not for the whole family.

Picture Copyright: BB Promotion GmbH

Dinosaurs - (A)live !?

When I first saw the walking with dinosaurs ad, I immediately decided to see the show (in spite of it being in German – seeing Godzilla in German wasn’t fun, but was a good way to learn the language since you know what the dialogue is going to be from the English version)…but what I had not counted on was the fact that I had already been pampered by Spielberg and Crichton, with the former giving a larger-than-life meaning to the latter’s words.

The show was for 80 minutes (with a 20 minute break in between) and was more or less like a live discovery channel documentary on dinosaurs….note the keyword is ‘live’. It was great to see the dinosaurs walk across just a few feet from me and it was amazingly realistic (I almost nodded when the host told us that we should use the camera flash at our own risk as the dinosaurs might react unexpectedly to modern technology!), but a walk with the dinosaurs also pushes up your expectations to something more exciting and dangerous than just the bellowing of a Tyrannosauras Rex. When you especially see a group of raptors, the mind automatically switches to the Jurassic Park mode and the tidbits about how they are very sharp and hunt in groups cross one’s mind and then when they just eat pieces from a carcass and leave the stage, you can’t help but feel extremely disappointed.

Two Brachiosauras in Love ;) :)

Tyrannosauras Rex with its baby (did you note the dinosaur-tamer in the arena ?)

The journey basically began with a paleontologist (I couldn’t help but think of Ross, his watch with the dinosaur-tail-hands-pointing-to-the-time, and all the dinosaur related stuff he did to drive everyone else crazy!) who explains everything from an egg hatching to reveal a baby dinosaur to the flowers and bees (which finally came into existence in the Cretaceous period) , with all the right stops in between – pre-Jurassic, Jurassic and post-Jurassic periods (depicted with a couple of Triceratops). The music, lighting, and the video screens (for those not positioned well to view the stage) were all right and it would have been one of a kind, had they included a fight or a chase (ok..maybe a chase is too much to ask for considering the size and weight of the dinosaurs!) or something a little more exciting for someone who is not 6 years old and is not scared of a dinosaur crying out in rage at its child being attacked or a carnivore spotting its prey !

Although one can appreciate their efforts in bringing the dinosaurs ''alive'' into the arena, that excitement wears off after a while when you realise that all they do is to walk around and the herbivores occasionally eat conifers while the carnivores try to scare them away.

You should go to the show only if you fall into at least one of the following categories
- you got free tickets to the show (duh!?)
- you have kids who are less than 10 yrs old (all the kids were hopped up with excitement!)
- you are a dinosaur-dude (like Ross :D)
- you have a girl friend who scares easy and is likely to hug you every time she is scared ;)

Hakuna Matata

...if that doesn't ring a bell, either you have not seen Disney's Lion King movie or you just need me to refresh your memory. It's one of the classics that was always dear to my heart and when I knew the broadway musical was playing in London, I decided to make it one of my first stops for two reasons, the great reviews and how everyone says that going to theatre in London in a must-do.

It was a typical London evening...windy, slightly cold when my friend and I rode the tube and landed in Covent Garden and marched right in to the hustle and bustle of the city. A short walk from there would get us to the Lyceum theatre, but wading through hordes of people (even for someone who is used to Ranganathan Street) was not easy. We made it in the nick of time and didn’t even pause to admire the theatre interior (which I did after the show) when a voice announced ‘the show will commence in 2 minutes’ and it started right on the dot at 7:30 pm.

I was very surprised to see how packed the theatre was given that the Lion King Musical had been running since 1997! A google search had revealed that the show lasts 2 hours and 40 minutes and since it was my first time in a theatre watching a musical, I was a little skeptical, but when we finally had the interval after 1.2 hours, I realized my legs had gone numb since I had crossed them and had not changed position for the entire time – now you know how engrossed I was!!

The opening itself was brilliant...you remember the movie right? The sun, the animals, the music – well it was the same and this time the effect was doubled because it was live and you never realized it was people playing the animals. When a couple of giraffes walk across the stage, you don’t notice that they are people on stilts with really long giraffe-neck hats until you stop to wonder how they actually do it! The elephants actually walked through the audience to get to the stage!

The characters who played it were perfect – the little Simbha and Nala adorable, the grown up versions perfectly fitting the mills-and-boon description (for the animal world, ofcourse :D), the father Mufasa commanding, his brother Scar charmingly wicked ! I thought the idea of all the people wearing huge masks as hats was brilliant because it made them look like real characters without unduly covering their faces with paints and masks ! The photo shows Simbha and you can see the lion's mask-cum-hat he is wearing (wonder if there is a another word for this).

The stampede in the which Mufasa is killed deserves special mention for how realistic it was – you can imagine trying to create a 1000 animal stampede on a 100sq.m stage. Hakuna matata doesn’t disappoint one bit, the colors, the music, the formations – everything is a treat to the eyes and ears! Like in movies, the interval was exactly at the right moment, when little Simbha grows up to a handsome young man…err…lion and you cant help but grin thinking of the plight of the villain when Simbha manages to catch up with him….it so looks like the beginning of a happily-ever-after !

During the interval, the only snack we managed to find was springles and I was cursing myself for buying it and more so for not eating it during the break itself since the crunchy noise was distracting me from the dialogues :D!

The Meercat Timon with his humor and sarcasm and Pumba, the warthog completely live up to expectations. Simbha meeting Nala again and falling in love is shown with a clichéd but still enjoyable dance sequence. The scene where Simbha hears his father talk to him and realises that he should go back to his kingdom definitely deserves a special mention, was well thought out and well presented. I thought the climax was handled a bit hapazhardly and there were so many things happening in the scene that if you saw one, you missed the others….oh..well..am just being picky !

I should mention this chubby African lady who begins the show with a high pitched note (reminded me of the kulavai satham in tamil movies). She was sort of the narrator but she did more than narrate, she cracked me up every time she came on the screen with her antics!

I usually stay away from reviews and try to watch movies, esp. those that are acclaimed as good, without knowing even a bit about the plot and if possible, the cast, since that helps me enjoy the movie immensely. But in this case, although I knew what was going to happen, I still couldn’t wait to see how they actually did it! Not only did the show leave me very impressed but it also painted a nice picture for a Broadway musical in my mind…next time someone invites me to one, I won’t think twice about it.

Copyright for pictures: Disney

From Beethoven to Kunnakudi

No, no....neither am I am going to claim that I heard kalyani in one of Beethoven's quartets nor am I going to find the similarities and dissimilarities between Kunnakudi Vaidyanathan's fingering techniques with that of Beethoven. As much as I like and enjoy classical music, I am in no way qualified to do that or ready to deal with the torrent of disagreements from other music lovers.

It all started with us getting invited to a Beethoven concert. We got the invitation 3 months before the concert and that goes to show how good the concert is, how difficult it is to get good seats and unfortunately it also gives one enough time to prepare for it (so you cannot go in with jeans and say you didn't have time to get yourself something formal to wear !)

My first experience was a Mozart concert in Vienna but that was catering to tourists and although the concert itself was very good and the ambience stunning (was in a castle), there was no pressure w.r.t clothes or etiquette. This time, I decided to wear my Dirndl, the traditional costume in Germany (comparable to namooru pattu sari - slowly dying and well-abused by the few who wear it) and I knew I had made the right choice when I entered the concert hall and noticed all the elderly ladies and gentlemen (I would guess the average age of the attendees as 50 and I am being polite) giving me an approving glance followed by the smile of approval !

The show was 45 minutes of a violin concert with solo pieces and after a short break, the Beethoven's 5th symphony.

I have listened to Beethoven before and more than the music itself, the concert, the orchestra, the conductor and the audience interested me. All along in the back of my mind, I was playing the last carnatic music concert of Ranjani and Gayathri, I had attended 2 years ago (and weirdly it was in Phoenix, Arizona and not singara Chennai) and I couldn't help comparing them.

There was pin-drop silence when the orchestra played that I was reluctant to open my purse to take a tissue out ! seriously !! What was hilarious was the bout of sneezing and coughing that would follow every piece......apparently everyone was holding it in for the break !!! Camera then zooms to our katcheri where people are talking to each other, next to them, behind them, in front of them, on the cell phone and all this is interspersed with occasional camera flashes and sounds of cranky kids.

The members of the orchestra looked grim and serious (like they were writing board exams completely unprepared) and not once did one of them talk to another or look away from their notes or show any sign of relaxing and not once did one of them smile while playing. I am thinking of the singers grinning at each other when one of them improvises, the Mridungam taking a break to let the violin in the forefront and vice versa and all along everyone seems to make eye contact with each other and with the audience.

When the violin solos were played, as much as I liked them, I did not find them powerful (inspite of all the great acoustic arrangements in the concert hall). When Beethoven's symphony was played, I enjoyed it very much and the power in it came from a well synchronised orchestra of more than 20 people. Rewind to the katcheri (Indian classical concert) in 2008 and couldn't help wondering how 4 people were able to produce the same effect on me, in a much simpler hall.

When the show was done, the orchestra got a standing ovation and we clapped until our hands ached and even when I stopped, the others went on, seriously ! It went on for minutes and the orchestra were tired of bowing at one point (I personally thought it was overdoing it but I learnt later that its the Dutch way) ! Obviously I thought about our Katcheri and how some clap and only a few of them whole heartedly, while the rest are in a hurry to leave to get to their parking spots before anyone else does.

I learnt during the concert that the role of the conductor is important during the rehearsals since he makes sure that the instruments and their tone complement each other and produce the intended effect but on stage, he is just there to satisfy the audience. The conductor was so excited that he was practically jumping with the beats and was red and sweating by the time the concert was over, when our host said ''now you know why there are no fat conductors''....true, now I know !

Ben Hur - Live

It was a cold day, 4 deg C outside, so wrapped in our pullovers and jackets, we set out to watch the much anticipated ''Ben Hur - Live'' at the Olympiahalle in Munich; having purchased the tickets more than 2 months ago.

(click on the pictures for a better view - tip for the not-computer-friendly people)

Intro:

The show had popular names when it was first advertised and the website boasted of a lot of numbers - right from costs of production to types of animals/birds used. It creates the effect needed but I think it also pushes expectations to levels that might leave a slight tinge of disappointment at the end of the show.

Story:

You have seen the movie, right ? For those who haven't, Messala and Judah Benhur are childhood friends who grow up to have different political views, the former in favour of the Roman empire and the latter in favour of the Jews. One thing leads to another and Judah ends up in the galley as a slave while his mother and sister end up in prison because of Messala. Judah swears revenge - how he manages to do that and how he is reunited with the family is the rest of the story and as in countless movies, the ''taking revenge'' part is made all exciting; with a chariot race in an arena in Rome.

So why is this called the tale of the Christ ? when Judah is sent to the galley, he is beaten up and lies nearly dead from thirst and Jesus offers him water. Judah repays this kindness by offering water to Jesus before the cruxifixion. Judah's sister and mother, who are affected by leprosy, are cured by Jesus and Judah is touched by Christ's love and message (shown in pic above).....subam.

Plus:

- The top place is taken by the chariot race (arena shown in pic, have no good pics of the race itself - horses speed > camera shutter speed) and the gladiators fighting. The sad part is that this only takes about 15 minutes of the 2 hour show.

- The stage props, their assembly, disassembly all coordinated to the second ! Brilliant ! The houses, the ship are all represented extremely well and accompanied by really good music and lighting.

- Messala and Judah - Both the actors were really good and looked the part.

- Horses - beautifully kept, wonderfully trained horses !

- Doves - they practically flew where they were asked to and returned to the cage ! was quite a sight to watch !

Minus:

- Too much drama and less action: The broschure is kind of misleading. I think I am being biased here because I have been pampered by the Stampede (not people dying.....its a rodeo) in Calgary where I enjoyed a 45 minute chuckwagon race - completely real and adrenaline-pumping ! That day, I actually understood why people get addicted to horse racing. I have also been pampered by the Ritterturnier at Schloss Kaltenberg, where one gets to see jousting, sword fighting and horse riding at its best (check out the link, you will be completely amazed !! I was gaping the whole time and the show lasted 1 hour !! should write about it....)

- Too many people: At any given time there were around 50 people in the arena. I understand that it is a city (Jerusalem or Rome) but like in the movies, you expect to give your attention to only the hero and heroine or the hero and the villain

- Too many themes: One can see that they have had trouble deciding what sections of people to satisfy, there are acrobats, fire spitters, dancers and almost everyone from a circus....every scene lasted a few minutes and you never know where to look and you can find the hero/heroine or the hero/villain only if you are really focussed.

- the narrator in the black suit (show is in latin, narration in German). How difficult would it be to give the narrator a costume too ?

On the whole, an enjoyable show that falls a little short of expectations.