/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/THEATRE-BRITAIN: An Asian Musical Makes History

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Samanta Sen

LONDON, Mar 12 2002 (IPS) - In the glamorous West End of London, history is in the making.

An Asian theme is being brought to the most fashionable centre for theatre in the world by an Asian cast under the direction of Andrew Lloyd Webber, the man behind London’s most famous musicals for decades.

Webber’s new production, Bombay Dreams, opens at the 2,200-seat Apollo Victoria theatre in London in June. A young Asian girl from south London, Preeya Kalidas, plays the lead role along with Raza, a London lad. This time the music comes not from Webber but from A.R.Rahman, India’s most sought after music composer for cinema.

Perhaps all this was inevitable. Films from Bombay, the capital of India’s cinema world have, for a couple of years, been making it to the top ten of the British charts, largely on the strength of the two million or so South Asians fans. That success has been noticed, even if most Brits won’t actually go and see one of these films. But with that world the subject of a Webber show at the West End, the audiences should come; or so at least Webber’s Really Useful Theatre Company hopes.

It is quite a change for Webber – even with his varied journey from Cats and Evita to The Phantom of the Opera. Some of that music has been heard before, some is new. Rahman is mixing some popular scores he’s done for Bombay films with some newstuff. There are about 20 songs in all. In Bombay style, they are there as songs to be listened to, and they are there to push the story along.

And the story? It doesn’t get more Bombay-like even in Bombay. Rich film producer Madan Kumar accidentally spots Akash, a poor slum dweller, and picks him for a role in his films. But Kumar is arrested because he takes on the Bombay mafia who want to control his company. Madan’s daughter Priya then takes up her father’s business.

The poor Akash falls in love with rich Priya, but not with sweet Sweetie who loves him. Priyatoo loves Akash secretly but she is engaged to Vikram. On the day of her wedding she learns that Vikram was behind the killing of her father. She turns to a happy destiny with Akash. And so the subtitle of the musical comes true:Two Hearts, Two Worlds, One Dream.

Two worlds came together when Andrew Lloyd Weber met Indian film director Shekhar Kapur in 1999. Shekhar directed Elizabeth, and is now directing a film on Nelson Mandela. The men seemed to have been of one mind. “I have waited for years for the culture ofthe Bombay film industry to be presented professionally to international audiences,” says Kapur.

Meera Syal, who gave British audiences Goodness Gracious Me, a take-off on South Asian life in Britain was called in to do the script. Oscar winner Don Black, famous for his Bond songs and for Phantom of the Opera, has written the lyrics.

Worlds came together also for Preeya Kalidas, the young Indian girl from London who auditioned four times in 2000 and again last year before she landed the star role. She was told of her Bombay Dreams the day she finished shooting for the film Bollywood Queen where she plays an Indian girl from East End in London who has dreams of Bollywood, and a white guy to go, or not go, with them.

Bombay Dreams is about Bombay, a good deal in it is from Bombay, but it is very much a West End musical. Preeya Kalidas who plays Priya sings most of the songs, with Raza who plays Akash. The father sings a song, so does Sweetie. The dances are being choreographed by Farah Khan along with Anthony Van Laast who choreographs dancing for West End musicals. The musical has a cast of 42, and is being produced at a cost of 6.3 million dollars.

In the hard world of West End, Bombay Dreams is a big gamble for a producer to take. Audiences for the West End theatre have fallen 15 per cent over the past few months, largely because American tourists have kept away. None have lost more audiences than the musicals. London might just have had too much of them. A critic remarked that their presence is giving the West End “a dismally constipated look.” The cynics among the critics are asking how many takers there will be for a musical of another culture that has the sights and sounds of the Indian entertainment business, but perhaps lacks substance.

Bombay Dreams is being targeted with hostile criticism before it’s happened. Not for English audiences, said one critic, those “Amazons on roller skates, pretending to be singing trains.” London now knows of Bollywood, the somewhat rude name given to Bombay cinema, but not everyone is a Bollywood fan. A critic in The Guardian spoke of the “unfeasibly garish world of Bollywood and all its attendant laughter, tears, trilling, twirling and navel-wobbling.”

Webber’s last play at the Apollo Victoria, Starlight Express, ran to 7,406 performances over 18 years. Bombay Dreams has been booked for a year. The box office is open buttheatre-goers haven’t exactly been rushing in with reservations yet. The Really Useful Theatre Company will be looking to plenty of the “brown pound”. Indians in Britain, and visitors from the US, rarely go to the West End. Now is the time for them to show money and, it is hoped, taste.

But which ever way it turns out, this is history being made in English theatre. “It’s the first ever West End show produced by Webber that has a predominantly Asian caste playing the lead,” Preeya Kalidas told IPS. “And I am the first Asian female in the world to be playing the lead in an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. It’s phenomenal, and that in itself will make history.”