The tagline for this British-Asian musical is “Britain meets Bollywood”, although neither place emerges unscathed from an often confused confection.
The redeeming feature of a cliché-ridden show is the joyous blend of classical and modern Indian choreography; the downside is that those clichés barely let up. Wah! Wah! is the noise that appreciative Indian audiences make instead of applauding, but a despairing type of “wah!” was what writer Tanika Gupta too often reduced me to.
Gupta’s pedestrian book and lyrics are the source of the problems in this production from the World Stages London festival. No character or situation has any heft, and a hokey framing device plays a cheap trick in the manner of a child finishing a story with, “And then I woke up”.
Bollywood films aren’t known for their realism, but the account of a Leeds teenager being threatened by domineering male relatives is sold embarrassingly short. “Safe in my arms/ Far from life’s harms” is a sample lyric.
Bindi (Rina Fatania), an East Londoner in a neighbourhood so multicultural that Pavel the Polish handyman speaks like David Hasselhoff, settles down to watch television. On screen, a Bollywood dance sequence starts up, and off we go to the troubled Indian dance club run by Soraya (Sophiya Haque).
Sita (appealing Natasha Jayetileke) arrives from Leeds, falls in love with Soraya’s son Kabir (Tariq Jordan) and off we go again, to a delightful dance number where potential lovers are wheeled about in garland-bedecked shopping trolleys. Choreographers Javed Sanadi and Gauri Sharma Tripathi deserve garlands of their own for the lithe, lively, lovely work.
It’s a smaller garland for composer Niraj Chag, whose songs jostle for space with wearingly over-amplified and lip-synched Bollywood classics.
Kneehigh director Emma Rice fails to inject her usual brand of pizzazz into proceedings, and why some poor actress had to keep flapping a model pigeon was beyond me. Though one line I did love was, “Get that pigeon out of my face, yeah?”
Wah! Wah! Girls runs until June 23 (0844 412 4322, sadlerswells.com).
For the latest shows and events visit our Going Out pages.
