Nandan and I went to a stage show in Agra. It was Kalakriti.
The show gives a biography of Shah Jahan and the building of the Taj Mahal. It is a melodramatic performance of the historical facts with no character development. The scenes change with simple props and there are lip synced songs with dance performances interspersed with the story.
It is billed as the first stage show of this sort in India so I am happy that this art is developing and I hope that everyone involved finds a lot of success and that this show ignites the industry. But I have to say that aside from the curiosity of what it is the script, presentation, and performance all are sub-par compared to what is expected in America. The dialogue is unnaturally plain and no character gets personality. The costumes are nice but it bothered me a little that backup dancers who performed together almost but did not quite dress in the same way, and that some royal advisers who were differentiated by name did dress in the same way. The entirety of the music was recorded and all songs and spoken dialogue were lip-synced, and many of the scenes of the play were shown on a video screen at the back of the stage. Tickets were USD $20-55 and there were about 100 people in attendance on the night I went, and the theatre had been showing only this play for at least a few years so I think the actors could have delivered a live performance. I suppose part of the issue was making pre-recorded translation available via headset in more than 15 languages and timing everything properly, but if I had directorial power I would try to have the actors time their scenes live and then queue translated audio at the beginning of each scene so that the worst thing that could happen is that one scene could become off-cue. Live theatre loses a lot when it becomes less live.