Bollywood on Broadway

Time Out New York Catches Bollywood Fever

Those of you living in New York need to check out the most recent issue of Time Out New York (see cover above featuring actresses Ayesha Dharker and Anisha Nagarajan), whose cover story, 14 pages in all, focuses on South Asians in New York and Bollywood coming to Broadway. Dharker and Nagarajan are both starring in the musical Bombay Dreams which is set to open on April 29 in New York, where it will be the biggest Indian-themed musical ever seen on Broadway, as it was in London. Preview performances begin March 29.

Incidentally, the British production of Bombay Dreams, according to this AP story in the Miami Herald, will be shutting down for several months in London while it is revised along the lines of the American production soon to open in New York, the show's producer Andrew Lloyd Webber said Wednesday.

"Having been in New York and seen some of the rehearsals for the show, I think that the exciting developments that have been made in terms of the book, the score and the set designs mean that this is the show I would like to see in the UK," Lloyd Webber, who composed "Cats" and "The Phantom of the Opera," said in a statement.

His office said the show will close June 13 at the Apollo Victoria Theatre. Changes will be made to the story line, score and set before the musical goes on a national tour late this year that will last several months. Only then will it return to London - to a smaller West End theater - toward the middle or end of 2005.

posted by sajit @ 6:09 PM