What: The Broadway tour of the "boy meets girl", rags-to-riches Bollywood musical about a Bombay slum boy who becomes an overnight movie star.
Reasons to go: It's the splashy dance numbers that make this fluffy concoction fun -- think Busby Berkeley crossed with Saturday Night Fever, including a "wet sari" number in an overflowing onstage fountain. A. R. Rahman's ballads are pretty and the uptempo numbers are catchy. I defy you not to be singing "Shakalaka Baby", the curry-flavored bubble gum hit, for days afterwards -- it's a genuine earworm. Sachin Bhatt has the attitude of a young John Travolta as slum heartthrob Akaash. Reshma Shetty is lovely as his meant-to-be love and Aneesh Sheth is affecting as his transgendered best friend Sweetie. Both Sandra Allen as screen goddess Rani and Christine Toy Johnson as an Entertainment Tonight-style gossip maven are delightfully bitchy.
Caveats: The story is intentionally cliche-ridden fluff and it takes a while for the audience to warm up to it. Compared to the spectacularly eye-popping Broadway production, the sets are rudimentary and the multi-cultural cast, though hard-working, doesn't give the music the same soul as the South Asian New York originals. But by the end it's a toe-tapper.
Backstory: Megacomposer Andrew Lloyd Webber fell for A. R. Rahman's music and decided that his own Really Useful Company should commission a musical from him. Bombay Dreams was a huge hit in London's West End, the first South Asian musical to make it there and on Broadway.
Target audience: If you like music videos & world music, this is fun. Leave your brain at home.
Details: Palace Theatre, Playhouse Square, Cleveland. (216)241-6000. Thru 4/2. http://www.playhousesquare.com
from Cool Cleveland contributor Linda Eisenstein LindaATcoolcleveland.com (:divend:)