Monday, 25 November 2019

Must learn to laugh at ourselves.

Alex in Wonderland (Tamil-English, Tanglish, Prime; 2019)

At the turn of the last century, the culture of standing on the stage, at the mic and making fun of people spread from Tinseltown to the East. The likes of Seinfield and Rodney Dangerfield must be the source of this culture. The idea of standing on a stage and rambling must have found a new place amongst yuppies after a perceived long days' work at the office.

Standup comedy has found a special place amongst who by nature, especially those from the Indian subcontinent, are thought to have the gift of the gab and the dubious reputation of being able to sell ice to Eskimos.

Many stand-up acts have come from India. I particularly like the self-deprecating Praveen Kumar and the Oxford-trained MBA product Papa CJ who insulted the British in a show in London for colonising India!

Alexander Babu is another entertaining artiste from Tamil Nadu. His shows are not the typical comedies, but this engineer by training who gave up his engineer's safety helmet for a spot under the stage-lights is quite a musically inclined fellow.


In this presentation, Alex goes down Tamil cinema memory lane to re-live the good times of the 1960s through to the 1990s. This multi-talented chap played the bongo, drums, harmonium (the Indian keyboard) and flute to sing some songs of the yesteryears. His rendition of songs of various playback singers and different musical composers is delightful. He comically presented his message. Along the way, Alex also becomes philosophical and tries to impart the message that, despite the differences, we are all the same.

In this world where everybody tries to be politically correct and easily offended, Alex has no qualms singing religious tunes of different religions. He remembers being exposed to all these tunes, and he realises that just like music, songs can be sung in different tunes, the message of God can be found via different religions. Kudos.





2 comments:

Against the grain