सभी का स्वागत
All Welcome
All Welcome
The very clever and extremely talented guys from Swamp have been scouring all of London (and beyond) for the best and most talented individuals to bring to life our one-off immersive theatre production Night at the Bombay Roxy.
We’re thrilled to share that after many applications, headshots, lines delivered, improvisations improvised and songs belted out, we have our full cast and crew! (It’s all of sudden becoming very real).
Without further ado, introducing… Cyrus, Ursula and the Bombay Roxy team.
The lead roles will be performed by Vikash Bhai, who will play the role of Cyrus, and Sophie Khan Levy who will play Ursula. They will be joined Raj Aich as Romesh, Seema Bowri as Farah, Manish Gandhi as Rudy and Harmage Singh Kalirai will play the role of the Inspector.
The live jazz band will feature Laurence Garrat on double bass, Miguel Gorodi on trumpet, Leon Greening on piano, Dave Ingamells on drums and Helena Kay on saxophone and clarinet.
This talented ensemble of actors and musicians will transport our diners-turned-audience members to the opening night of the Bombay Roxy, a café and jazz club housed within a former Art Deco cinema set in Bombay, 1949. The performance will be matched with welcome cocktails and a lavish dining experience of our best Bombay dishes as the performance unfolds.
Night at the Bombay Roxy is a rich, immersive, Indian noir. We’ve been working with Swamp Studios, an innovative theatre company, led by Ollie Jones and Clem Garritty (from the award-winning theatre collective Kill the Beast). Directed by Eduard Lewis, Associate Director of Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax (The Old Vic, 2015), the rest of the creative team includes composer Dom Jones, movement director Sara Green, lighting designer Christopher Nairne and sound designer, David Gregory.
The show will immerse the audience in the intriguing world of 1940s Bombay, where an unexpected and exciting jazz scene was flourishing alongside a uniquely Bombay version of the Art Deco style (the city remains the biggest and best example of Art Deco architecture in the world, after Miami). Whilst Bombay’s architects and designers studied Western Art Deco, they redefined it by creating a distinctive Indian style. Jazz was first introduced to Bombay in the 1930s by touring American artists who opened the city’s ears to new sounds. Local musicians were quick to catch on, and by the 1940s ‘hot jazz’ was everywhere. This was Bombay’s glamorous jazz age, as told in Bombay-based author (and our dear friends) Naresh Fernandes’ critically acclaimed book, Taj Mahal Foxtrot – the inspiration for this play.
The production will play out in the beautiful surroundings of the as-yet-unopened Dishoom Kensington from 27th November until 14th December 2017. For tickets and info see the production For tickets and info see the production website.
Dishoom Kensington will officially open at midday on 15th December 2017 and we’d love to invite you all to help us prepare for the opening by attending our soft launch. The soft launch will run from Thursday 16th November until Wednesday 22nd November (8am-11pm weekdays, 9am-11pm weekends). You can all enjoy 50% off your food as thanks for helping out with this final stage of our training.
After the soft launch, there is a rather complicated opening-closing business, due to the theatre production. Please see our journal for exact details on when you can visit!
The sun is momentarily out again. Calendars are fast filling up. There’s many a thing to do and many a friend to meet. And if we may kindly add to the excitement and the plan-making, here’s our list of what we’re looking forward to in September.
While we were at Edinburgh Fringe Festival, we caught Evening Conversations, an engaging show by Sudha Bhuchar. We caught up with her after the show to talk about her journey and her views on South Asian representation on screen, which you can read below. And for those who didn’t walk down the cobbled streets of the city or stumble into an impromptu performance this year, we highly recommend it for 2024.
Each year as August dawns, the streets and rooms and corners of Edinburgh fill with music, art, laughter and song. Wander into grand halls and pokey pubs, as the morning sun rises or in the dark of night, to see creations of every kind as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. In honour of this wonderful celebration of the performing arts (and as a little treat), here’s a special edition Dishoom Loves, covering all the acts we’ve circled on our festival programme.
For anyone looking to learn or read more on Partition, this page holds a series of resources, for all ages, created by people knowledgeable and knowing about such matters. It is by no means definitive – we have simply found them to be useful, inspiring and accessible.