A.R.Rahman (Fan Club)-Part2 - Page 5

Songs, saris and kitsch, Bollywood-style

By Misha Berson

Special to The Seattle Times

It's got oodles of toned, bare, undulating midriffs. It's got silky saris galore in many shades of the rainbow. It's got more glitter and lam than a full season of TV's "Dancing with the Stars," and more synthesized sitar sounds to hip-hop beats than ... anything but a Bollywood flick.

Actually, the show in question really is a Bollywood flick — pumped up and slickly reconfigured as a live musical.

It is "Bombay Dreams," the cheerfully garish, ultimately stupefying London hit (but Broadway wipe-out) which is opening the 5th Avenue Theatre's new season.

This splashy, loud, amiable homage to India's movie-musical craze is ending its U.S. tour in Seattle. And according to my Bollywood-mad companion on opening night, fans of the Indian movie craze will be very familiar with this show's look, characters, cheeky-sincere attitude and its heavily miked score, by the prolific Bollywood composer A.R. Rahman (with English lyrics by Don Black).

Full disclosure: I'm a newbie to the Bollywood phenom. I've never seen an entire film in that genre, only music videos culled from the vast trove of cinematic extravaganzas churned out in Bombay dream factories.

Many regular 5th Avenue Theater patrons are probably with me on this. And they might be as lightly charmed, and often bored, by "Bombay Dreams" as I was.

It's no surprise that the show's romantic, rags-to-rupees plot is sort of preposterous.

Akaash (Sachin Bhatt) is a gorgeous Bombay slum kid who longs to be a matinee idol. He gets his big chance with a lead role in a Bollywood movie, "Diamond in the Rough," headlined by the snotty Indian superstar Rani — played by (suspend disbelief, please) Asian-American actress Sandra Allen.

After Akaash, a member of India's "untouchable" caste, beats the odds to become a star, he turns his back on his old slum cohorts — including his wise guru of a granny and some smart-alecky but lovable eunuch transvestites.

He also falls for a gorgeous, principled wannabe movie director, Priya (Reshma Shetty), though she's engaged to another guy. But Priya taps Akaash to star in her own Bollywood film, "Bombay Dreams," about a slum kid who turns his back on his own people, falls for a seemingly unattainable woman and ... oh, never mind.

The show's book by Meera Syal (jazzed up a bit with quips from the old Broadway hand Thomas Meehan) piles on the Hollywood/Bollywood clichs — though it could be the first Broadway musical to have a legal-aid lawyer as its villain.

But I digress. On to the musical numbers, more than a dozen of 'em. The most enjoyable are the colorful, infectious, uptempo ones. Best of the bunch: "Shakalaka Baby" and "Chaiyya, Chaiyya," where the gyrating ensemble line-dances to East-meets-West, drum-driven boogies.

But oh, those searching, tonsil-tearing ballads like "The Journey Home" and "Is This Love?" With the exception of the more endurable "How Many Stars?", they sound like warmed-over (and badly amplified) Andrew Lloyd Webber tunes. And why not? "Bombay Dreams" was "based on an idea" by Lloyd Webber and Shekhar Kapur.

It was directed by Baayork Lee, who, despite her best efforts, can't obscure the tedium of the last third of this 2 -hour offering. Lisa Stevens created the simplistic but limber music-vid choreography.

But the real star here are the (uncredited) costumers. Some of those spangly saris are to die for.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com