Published: 15 July 2010
by JOSH LOEB

•WANT to sing, dance and perform? Auditions are being held for a yet to be chosen musical to be staged in aid of a charity that helps people with myeloma – a rare type of cancer. The Camden Association of Street Properties (CASP) is staging auditions at the Winchester Project, Winchester Road, Hampstead, on Saturday July 24 and Saturday July 31 from 12-4.30pm. Anyone “between the ages of 16 and 100” is welcome. Amateurs only. You can either bring a backing track with you or sing unaccom­panied. Funds raised from ticket sales to the musical will go to charities Myeloma UK and Marie Curie Hospice, Hampstead. 

• ’Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays: Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays, and one by one back in the Closet lays.  These lines from The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, the great Persian polymath of the 11th century, are as true today as they ever were, says Gopi Warrier. The Regent’s Park-based playwright’s latest work, God Sports, is inspired by the age-old notion that life is a mere game, a sport of gods.

Described as a tale of love and science, it explores conflicts between eastern and western thought. It incorporates aspects of astrophysics and research  into the existence or otherwise of the so-called “god particle” in Switzerland’s Large Hadron Collider. Mr Warrier, who was born near Cochin in western India, told me traditional Hindu thought is borne out in the latest science. He added that his next play will be about the Malabar Yehudan – the ancient Jewish community in Cochin.

God Sports is at the New End Theatre, 27 New End, NW3, until July 31, 8.15pm, (Sun 5pm). £16 and £18. 
0870 033 2733.