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As 1980’s pop recedes into ancient history so the  play with the playful Spoonerism title based around  the almost eponymous Eighties  hit band embarks on a nationwide tour.

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All Photos Richard Lakos

Bollywood style has been first a South east Asian , and then an imported, favourite, for a long time. This week its hits the mainstream and Derby.

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Frankie Goes to Bollywood, is a  spectacular musical from Rifco Theatre Company, and  a vibrant celebration of British South Asian culture. It cleverly fuses  modern contemporary storytelling with the established traditions of    Bollywood cinema. It is also not afraid to borrow thematically from previous stories on fame and adulation including Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard and Evita, the seventies film Stardust, with a bit of Korean K Pop thrown in.

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Conceived by Rifco’s Artistic Director, Pravesh Kumar MBE, and inspired by his decade working in the heart of Bollywood, the hit musical was written and directed by Pravesh Kumar, songs & lyrics by Tasha Taylor Johnson and songs & music by Niraj Chag, the production follows a young dreamer with big ambitions as she journeys into the heart of the Bollywood film industry.

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This was my first live, full exposure to a Bollywood show so my interest, curiosity and expectation was high. How would it compare to traditional Western big production musicals?

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Counterintuitively, the action starts in Huddersfield before traversing the globe to its homeland in Mumbai,India, to focus on Frankie, played by Elinor Hallett as a child, telling her mother of her dreams of being a Bollywood Hero. Frankie quickly grows up, played by Sarah Pearson, and a bereaved Frankie is now serving popcorn with her cousin at a Huddersfield cinema

We follow the story of Frankie, a young British Asian woman, with little interest in fame, who finds herself becoming a star in the complicated, corrupt, male dominated world of film making in India. Which is no different from the fame machine in any part of the world

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Cousin Goldy, played by Katie Stasi, also dreams of being in the movies, but fate intervenes and Frankie is the one who gets the opportunity to go to Bollywood and become a movie star. But will Frankie find her dream and remain true to herself, will she be the Warrior she always thought she was or will she get chewed up by the relentless pressure that is the production of movies in Bollywood? Will the brown Sugar girls team hold? Will Frankie find herself too brown to be British and too British to be brown

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The answer comes swathed in sparkle, glitz and glamour. Costume designer Andy Kumar’s imagination is to the fore, as are the backstage costume changers with dazzling colours, sequins, high heels , and more sequins. All revolving on and off stage with bewildering speed.

The choreography is mesmerising, courtesy of choreographers Nicola Mac and Anna Maria Barber. Watch out for the airborne transatlantic dance transporting Frankie to Bollywood . But this show is not just about the girls.

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Luke Suri shines as Shona, camp, dazzling and energetic. Raju King, the aging Bollywood lothario is played by Ankur Sabharwal who provides the laughs with a very good running joke about shampoo.

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Bollywood drama demands that the hero or heroine triumphs leaving the virtuous protagonists to live happily ever after- and this show follows that script . A show to savour, combining laugh out loud comedy , the seamy side of Bollywood, and putting on the Ritz glitz. A terrific production driven by concealed live onstage musicians

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Irish music found its place with Riverdance, English traditional music with Brassed off, English Pop music with Sunny Afternoon and now Frankie Goes to Bollywood establishes South east Asian popular music in its own right on the stage of British Musical theatre. “Frankie” shimmies and sashays at Derby until Saturday 16th before continuing on nationwide tour.

Gary Longden

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