Quo Vadis?

Romeo & Juliet, the classic tragedy by Shakespeare, reimagined and adapted to the music of AR Rahman, presented by a Dance Company. The show was produced by an actress / dancer with a film back ground that should ensure good production values in addition to good media coverage. The sum of it all seemed to be a Sunday evening well spent when I bought the tickets for yesterday’s performance. The show started half an hour late which was a good thing considering the parking challenges and the traffic, the sparse crowd in the balcony also gave us a choice of seats in the free seating Music Academy.  The opening credits started with the National Award winning “Chinna Chinna Aasai” that made me feel warm inside and look forward to the evening ahead. The stage had very basic props with one gazebo hardly being used and seemed to be taking up unnecessary space, the famous Juliet’s Balcony however on the other end of the stage was used more and despite the lack of height it s...

                                  (Image courtesy Google Images) As alerted to a music concert by IR on TV by some pained comments on my Twitter TL. It was a concert organized in Canada but the side acts of actor / director Parthiban & actor Vivek put me off considerably that I switched channels soon. Still do not understand the wisdom of these acts in a music concert. Remember the pained comments I mentioned at the start; well they were regarding the quality of singing by some of the stalwarts of the playback industry. The essence of good singing is pitching and these days the play back greats seem to be having a problem with their pitching while singing on stage. Considering that these concerts are paid and there are many who spend good money to watch a performance, poor singing is a disservice to the fans. I understand the challenges on a stage but that is the least expected of a pro...