‘Even the Gods love jokes,’ propounded Plato. The time is ripe for us humans to laugh.
Rehearsing to set our ribs tickling, the soloists of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels , the cast members, dancers, musicians, crew, et al , are living and reliving the comic timing of Hollywood’s 1988 MGM musical by the same name before they make their jokes public this coming weekend.
“The script and songs are hilarious. We are having fun at the rehearsals much like we did with Spamalot ,” beams Leila Alvares, who brings musicals to Bengaluru each year with renewed enthusiasm.
As the monsoon air steams up with riotous humour of the script, Leila confesses: “Frankly, when I first watched the film, I found it a little dated. But the musical is a whole different ball game.
The lyrics are hysterical, the jazzy score heavenly and the script hilarious. So, all in all, it wasn’t too difficult to decide on doing Dirty Rotten Scoundrels .”
Then, of course, there was the difficult challenge of finding two swindlers who could sing, dance, act and keep the comic timing. This challenge, to put it happily, was an easy task for Leila.
“It’s normally difficult to find a multi-talented cast, but as usual, I have been fortunate. Rahael Thomas and Arvind Kasthuri who have worked with me before, are both veteran actors with great comic timing. There are also some new faces like Jennie George and Joewin Shamalina, and they are incredibly talented youngsters who play their roles perfectly. Plus, there are our old favourites like Nitya Samuel, Shyju Varkey and Prem Koshy.”
Besides this, there’s Leila’s live band, headed by Vivek Menzel. “It consists of talented, yet humble youngsters including Blesswin Emmanuel, Reshwin Washington, Aashish Paul and Kimberly D’Souza,” says Leila.
“The dances, which are in part, choreographed by Rhea Thomas – she is Rahael’s sister. And old hands, or in this case, feet, Lionel DeNazareth and Alisha D’Souza have helped with directing the rest of the dances. In fact, while I have followed the West End version of the musical, the dancers are all dressed in French costumes.”
Every season, connoisseurs with their families, friends, even acquaintances and newer audiences mark their calendars to watch Leila’s musicals in the city, and over the years in other cities across the state and country.
This year, Leila has decided to invite children from various orphanages to watch their morning tech rehearsals along with students from some regular schools in Bengaluru.
“We are all die-hard actors at heart just wanting to bear our souls through song and dance. That alone is enough to keep bringing us all back year after year,” beams Leila, humming her favourite hauntingly romantic, yet uproarious tune “Love is my legs”, one of the scores from the upcoming stage production of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels .
