{"id":293,"date":"2000-12-07T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2000-12-07T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2000\/12\/07\/2000-12-07-birmingham-loves-ramayana\/"},"modified":"2000-12-07T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2000-12-07T12:00:00","slug":"2000-12-07-birmingham-loves-ramayana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2000\/12\/07\/2000-12-07-birmingham-loves-ramayana\/","title":{"rendered":"Birmingham Loves Ramayana"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.guardianunlimited.co.uk\/Archive\/Article\/0,4273,4081627,00.html\">GO TO SOURCE<\/A><\/P><br \/>\n<P><\/p>\n<p>BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND, October 26, 2000: Epics are everywhere. Theatre critic Micheal Billington was captivated by a new version of the legendary Sanskrit saga, the &#8220;Ramayana,&#8221; adapted by Peter Oswald and produced by Indhu Rubasingham, hailing it &#8220;witty and inventive&#8221; delighting the large, multiracial audience. He wrote, &#8220;What struck me was its blend of the spiritual and the secular. It is an adventure story, but the basic themes are universal: sacrifice, fidelity, sexual and fraternal love, the conflict of good and evil. What is impressive about Oswald&#8217;s version is the way it captures both the story&#8217;s Hindu origins and its cross-cultural appeal. If the narrative leaps lightly over East-West barriers so, too, does Rubasingham&#8217;s production, which is characterized by its merry eclecticism. In an age of parsimony it is also astonishing to see 21 actors and two musicians on stage. From a vast company, I would single out Gerald Kyd as a stately, turquoise Rama, Andrew French as the rapacious Ravana, Miltos Yerolemou as a hairy, Pan-like Lord Hanuman and Charlotte Bicknell, who has a remarkable capacity to stay in character while dangling upside down from a rope. Erratic lighting aside, this is a totally charming show that gives us access to an Indian classic and combines uplifting spiritual odyssey with old-fashioned magic.&#8221;<br \/>\n<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>GO TO SOURCE BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND, October 26, 2000: Epics are everywhere. Theatre critic Micheal Billington was captivated by a new,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}