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METROSCAPE
Rooting
For Delhi
It was a long wait
in the snaking queues outside Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru stadium, and inside,
before The Roshans Show finally kicked off, an hour-and-a-half behind
schedule. But for the anxious starry-eyed Delhiite who had come to watch
Hrithik Roshan jive live last week amid leaping flames and laser beams
on the tacky, 10,000 sq ft stage, changed everything. Delhi had been waiting
long. And Hrithik knew. After the dramatic entry-overhead, atop a moving
crane-he reeled off just what the 50,000-odd crowd wanted to hear: "Dilli
is the heart of Hindustan. Will you give me your heart?"
The Roshan family was there in full strength-papa
Rakesh Roshan, who said the show was special because Delhi was where their
roots and relatives were, music composer Rajesh Roshan, and Hrithik's
wife Suzanne, who demurely watched from the front row. Delays and the
inept security apart, Hrithik was clearly the show's saving grace-if you
don't count the mobile green loos inside the stadium-dancing to hit numbers
from his films, Kaho Naa Pyar Hai, Mission Kashmir and Fiza and throwing
heart-shaped cushions at the audience. Actresses Amisha Patel and Namrata
Shirodkar played along, playback-singers Alka Yagnik and Udit Narayan
and emcee Archana Puran Singh crooned on, but it was Hrithik all the way
... and it was all that mattered.
-Methil Renuka
Lover's Lyrics
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Opposites attract: The Naach Party and the Indi-5
in perfect tandem
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He could have done
a Tommy. Worse still, Roysten Abel-tripped into the musical extravaganza
pit-could have saddled us with a West Side Story. Instead, Scene Stealers'
Much Ado About Nautanki, at Delhi's Kamani Auditorium embroiled an all-girl
pop group, Indi-5, with an all-male, harmonium-totting Baijnath Naach
Party into a cauldron of original drama, humour and music. It helped that
the actors' background was similar to that of their characters. "Initially,
because of their divergent cultures, they didn't speak to one another,"
says producer Vivek Mansukhani. "Later, through workshops, they bonded."
Like their on-stage counterparts, whose mutual admiration results in love
in an abridged and not quite original Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
mode. But the conclusion, so interpretive that Abel continues to ponder
the fate of the class-torn lovers, was a requisite to a script that evolved
only after the auditions. It also reaffirmed Abel's positive role as control
freak-he devised, designed and directed Much Ado. The actors voices, denied
the crutch of those odious hanging mikes, prodded composer Gautam's pop
with thumri and Sufi score to triumph. And even as the threadbare "let
the actors not be hindered" set concept is beginning to be a bit
of a bore, the ensemble cast did manage to fill with melody and integrity,
the empty spaces. Much Ado? Rather.
-Sonia Faleiro
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