Orchestras, Operas, Musicals, and Plays Oh My!

The past couple weeks we have been able to enjoy some of the arts here in Chennai. India in general and Chennai in particular does not place much emphasis on the arts. Plays, musicals, and symphonies are not important part of the culture here. So, we were very excited to be able to see four different shows all at the same theater over the course of two weeks. All four shows were at the Sir Mutha Venkattasubba Rao Concert Hall (say that three times fast). It is a very comfortable theather with nicely padded seats that fully recline (with cupholders).

The first thing we saw was a matinee of the musical "Joseph and His Coat of Many Colours". It was a version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat". I have never seen the original version, so I am not sure how much they changed it. It did seem to have a little more of an India flavor in the choreographed dances. It was very over-the-top acting and dancing, but it was well done. Overall, an entertaining afternoon.

The next week we were given tickets to Day 2 of a Western Classical Music Festival. We missed Day 1, which was a piano soloist and a string quartet. Day 2 was great. It was a performance by The Madras Chamber Orchestra, a string orchestra. They are an all-Indian string orchestra that played on the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack. They played a great selection of classics from Bach, Mozart, Vivaldi, and others as well as two original compositions. The original compositions (composed by the first violinist) blended Western Classical with traditional South Indian Carnatic. The performance was really excellent.

During the intermission of the Madras Chamber Orchestra's performance, it was announced that they would be giving away tickets for "An Evening at the Opera" that would be taking place a few days later. Naturally, we decided that the free tickets would be too good to pass up. "An Evening at the Opera" featured a Swedish tenor and pianist. They first sung a selection of Swedish songs then a selection of more familiar Opera arias. After a piano solo, they finished off with some Broadway classics. Overall, it was a great performance. The tenor had a powerful voice with great control.

The next night we went to the opening night of "The 39 Steps", a comedy based on an Alfred Hitchcock movie. The play only makes use of four actors who end up playing a total of over 150 roles. It was really well done and quiet funny. The actors did a very good job. Their timing and choreography were solid. Their accents (which included British, Scottish, German, and French) were not great but were probably as good as can be expected from an Indian cast. We enjoyed it a lot.

Our arts experiences in Chennai has been good. Audiences here are a little different than we are used to. None of the performances we went to were full. In a couple of them, we were originally sitting in the balcony, but were brought down to the lower section to fill it out. Before both the play and the musical, a projector played commercials from the sponsors before the play began and again during the intermission. Cameras and recording devices are not banned and don't even seem to be frowned upon. People were holding up cameras and cell phones videotaping each song during the Madras Chamber Orchestra's performance. During all the performances the occasional flash came from the audience (although we didn't bring our camera to any). We also heard more cell phone rings and text message dings than we would in a typical American theater. None of that lessened our enjoyment of the performances. We feel lucky that we were able to experience such a variety of quality performances, and we hope that we are able to experience more of the arts during our time here.

-Miles