Bombay Dreams - Andrew Lloyd-Webber goes east in the new musical.

(Edited highlights of the panel's review)

Watch the whole programme - 21 June 2002

MARK LAWSON:
Bonnie Greer, it is an attempt to bring together the West End musical and Bollywood musical. Does it work?

BONNIE GREER:
On the one hand, it was really good to be in that house, and to sit there and be in the type of audience that was there. It is a dream audience for what the West End is trying to do, which is to bring in new audiences. It does that.

It is really good to see those people on the stage, people who don't get employed a lot in the West End. I was really happy to see the musicians, happy to see the actors. That is the political Bonnie.

The Bonnie that has been in the theatre for a long time has to say that this is not a great job. One of the problems is the script. In this kind of show, we have to depend on the script to get us into the world of Bollywood, because most of us won't know anything about it.

The script is our only anchor. The script just doesn't do that. It is a full of cliches. There is an interesting thing with the eunuch, who's the third sex character that Meera Syal develops. That's an interesting possibility, but we never know from the script what take we're supposed to have.

Is this a play about Bollywood and the Bollywood style, and then we relax into it? Is this is a West End musical that's trying to do a Bollywood thing? The first scene shows the Bombay slums, and it's almost like Brigadoon with saris. You sit there and think, "We're too smart for this. We know the slums don't look like this. So what are we seeing?". It's that kind of uneasy mix that sinks it.

MARK LAWSON:
Mark Kermode, as Bonnie suggests there, almost all musicals now are parodies. Mamma Mia's a parody, the Queen musical is a parody. This is a parody, specifically of Bollywood. Does it work on those terms?

MARK KERMODE:
I really enjoyed it. I went in feeling a lot more cynical, but came out really liking it. The thing about the script not working very well, Meera Syal does write in a way which is episodic and looks sometimes like a lot of sketches from Goodness Gracious Me.

The funny thing is that, for me, that shambolic, ramshackle, off the back of a lorry, let's do the show here quality, worked for it. For a show which is so technically advanced, which has got internal waterfalls, massive great big moving sets, huge big things happening. It did have, and I don't mean this badly, almost an amateurish quality about it which really, really won me over. I thought it was innocent and delightful in a way which utterly surprised me.

There were a moments in it in which I thought the great dread hand of Andrew Lloyd Webber laid down, and suddenly we got someone singing a song about "When you're going home, your heart gets into the station before the train". Then you were nodding off and thinking, "We're back to Evita again".

But I thought for most of it, it managed to take what those Bollywood musicals do, which is take a bit of this, a bit of that, a bit of the kitchen sink, shove them all together, throw them all at the audience. It is a big, long, brash show, I thought it worked.

MARK LAWSON:
I must say, Natasha, that Andrew Lloyd Webber has always been attacked for being a cheesy crowd pleaser, but he has gone experimental lately. There was The Beautiful Game, which was set in the Belfast troubles, there is now this. He is certainly trying to do something different.

NATASHA WALTER:
He is. This one only really came alive when something different happened, when there was something different on the stage, where Bollywood suddenly happened.

In the clips that we saw, we had the two big extravaganza numbers, especially the one that opened the second act, when it seemed to come alive. There, I felt the exuberance that you were talking about, Mark, this big, big� Yeah, a bit ramshackle, but a huge energy coming off the stage.

That was really fun and alive. The dancing was great, it was kind of sexy. But that was very, very rare. There really were only two numbers like that. I just think to make this work you just had to throw yourself into a bit more. I think if Meera Syal, and if the choreographers had said, yes, Bollywood, let's go for it. Extravagant, exuberant, big, mad, then it would've worked. But Meera Syal made it too distant, too ironic, it wasn't whole-hearted enough.

MARK LAWSON:
I know what you mean. I suddenly had this fantasy in the first half that A.R. Rahman actually was a pseudonym for Andrew Lloyd Webber, because the music sounded like him. He has written songs under pseudonyms, for example Daisy Pulls It Off. If we look at this number, this sounds so Lloyd Webber that it is hard to believe it isn't him.

CLIP SHOWN OF LOVE SONG BETWEEN TWO LEADS

MARK LAWSON:
I thought that was quite fascinating, Bonnie. They're trying to bring together all these different styles here, but in fact, having hired an Indian composer, he starts writing like Lloyd Webber.

BONNIE GREER:
Well, that's the problem, to go back to what Mark was saying about the naivety of it. I don't think that is on purpose. That is the tone that makes you try to figure out what is going on there. You settle into it because you have to.

There is so much energy going on. For instance in that number, it is a big, show-stopping number that demands big West End voices. These are pop singers. The voices are thin, they are a little reedy. I was sitting there wondering if they were going to actually make the top notes. It is not the kind of thing you go to the West End to see. The house and the tradition demands a kind of show, and it doesn't happen.

MARK KERMODE:
Those two songs you are talking about, the one we saw and the other one about the train going into the station, are the two moments in which it is trying to do the straight forward Lloyd Webber thing. I think those are the low points. I don't think that they're show-stopping numbers at all. I think they're the two bits in the production that I remember thinking, "This will be over in three minutes and the rest of it will get on".

What I do remember is the rest of it being much more vibrant It was almost like we were in a different play. I remember the rest of it going "chigga chigga, chigga!" Then there are these two boring songs, but the rest of it is all up. I thought it had energy and oomph.

MARK LAWSON:
I thought you were unfair to say Brigadoon, because I thought there was a sense of place here in large parts of it.

BONNIE GREER:
It didn't look anything, I have not been to Bombay. I've talked to people who have been to Bombay. The people who've seen the show have said the light looked like it could have been in Portsmouth or something.

MARK LAWSON:
The light is a bit frantic. I've been to Bombay, but I thought the sense of that society, you get some of that. I thought the way it's done economically, that you can tell large parts of the story through the Bollywood posters.

BONNIE GREER:
But these are beggars. You bring Bombay, and suddenly they stand up and sing, and it is a lot like Brigadoon, and you think, "What in the world is happening here?"

NATASHA WALTER:
Meera Syal sets it up as though it is going to be this big clash between Bollywood and realism. But the realism is just these colourful, picturesque beggars. I think that's very unsettling.

MARK KERMODE::
It's like saying West Side Story doesn't work because it doesn't actually look like New York. It looks as much like Bombay as West side story does New York.

BONNIE GREER:
It has the feeling of somebody cashing in on a trend, let me just say that.

MARK LAWSON:
I think that's really unfair, Lloyd Webber is a radical, experimental artist, and we never thought that we'd say that!