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Donald Trump will not be heading to Broadway Theatre on April 29 to deliver his famous catchphrase in the television show, The Apprentice: You Are Fired!
Instead, he will be there to applaud young actors like Manu Narayan, Anisha Nagarajan, Ayesha Dharker and Sriram Gamesman and composer A R Rahman, who debut on Broadway in one of the best theatres in New York.
Trump is among the many celebrities and newsmakers, including several Oscar and Emmy winners, who have accepted the invitation for the premiere of Bombay Dreams, the $14 million musical that has been in previews for a month.
The partial list of guests include Jewel, Mike Wallace, Spike Lee and former mayor Rudolph Guiliani, and a raft of headline-makers from the theatre world, including Julie Taymore (Lion King) and Susan Stroman (The Producers).
Filmmakers Ismail Merchant and James Ivory will also attend.
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"We are going to have a whole lot of powerful and colourful people," says Anita Waxman, producing partner of Waxman Williams. But don't expect to see the kind of spectacle one saw in London when Andrew Lloyd Webber had, among other things, a Mumbai cab going around the theatre before the premiere.
"Andrew owns theatres in London," said Waxman, "so he can get a lot of things done there. But we are going to have plenty of fun. Our guest list is very impressive."
Unlike at the London premiere about two years ago, the Bollywood contingent will be small in New York. Shah Rukh Khan was a big draw at the London premiere. But this time, he and choreographer-turned-director Farah Khan will be
in Mumbai for the opening of their Main Hoon Na.
Several Bollywood stars are now in America, but they are tied up with a number of shows on the West Coast. Singer Shankar Mahadevan, who has performed several hit songs for Rahman, was expected to attend. Mahadevan is in New York for the Bollywood Awards.
Several Bollywood stars, including Kareena Kapoor, had shown interest in attending the premiere since they are also coming for the Bollywood Awards, but their arrival schedules might make it difficult for them to attend the event.
Unlike on other nights when the Broadway shows starts at 8, on April 29 the curtains will go up at 6.30 pm. The guests will start arriving an hour before the show. The post premiere party starts at 9.30 pm, and would wind up before
midnight.
An hour after the party, the talent behind the show and its producers will be glued to their computers, scanning the reviews.
"We are not expecting every newspaper to write a positive review," Waxman said. "If critics come to this show with an open mind and enjoy a lovely musical comedy, they will write good things."
She also remembered that two of Lloyd Webber's most popular shows, Cats and The Phantom Of The Opera, got many negative reviews in New York and London. The former ran for nearly two decades in New York and The Phantom is in its 18th year in New York. Both shows have had extremely successful versions running in over 50 cities across the world.
"We have an exuberant show with a wonderful new cast, and we have been having very good responses during the previews," Waxman said of Bombay Dreams. "The performances and the could only go to be better day after day."
"We are thrilled with the four Outer Critics Circle nomination, thrilled that critics from outside New York have liked our show," she added, "and we hope we will do well at the Tony's too."
The Tony nominations, Broadway's equivalent of the Oscars, will be announced on May 10. The cutoff date for the nominations is May 5.
For the London premiere, Rahman had invited some of the biggest Indian filmmakers, including Subhash Ghai as he had rewritten some of the songs from their films for Bombay Dreams.
"I had also wanted them to see what I have been doing," Rahman said two weeks ago, recalling the London premiere.
"I had been away from Mumbai and Chennai for over a year, and some of them might be wondering, 'What is this boy up to?'," he said, chuckling. He did not know if any one of his London guests would be coming to New York. The Broadway show has been retooled considerably.
But, he says, "They [the producers] may feel they have already seen the show," he added.
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