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Another season, another spangly dance extravaganza. And this one, on paper at least, has an impressive pedigree: the composers Salim and Sulaiman Merchant – the brothers behind the musical ‘The Merchants of Bollywood’, seen frequently in London since 2010 – and the acclaimed Indian choreographer and director Rajeev Goswami.
They’ve assembled a troupe of more than 20 dancers, whose talent and commitment is inarguable. Several of the routines, which encompass a range of dance forms, from classical Indian kathak to modern Western styles, are feasts for the eyes and ears.
It would have been much better, then, if the production had been left as a showcase for the dancers, in the vein of a pure dance show like ‘Tango Fire’. Instead, the routines have been shoehorned around an execrable script, whose storyline – German-born Indian woman returns to her homeland, intending to reconsecrate her mother’s dream of bringing her Munich Indian dance theatre back to life – is both creaky and dreadfully clichéd.
When the dancers start acting, against a hideous CGI backdrop, it all becomes toe-curlingly hammy. Still, the leads, Ana Ilmi and Mohit Mathur, do their best, and when they dance, it is impossible to take our eyes from them. And perhaps the clichéd storyline is intended as some sort of metatheatrical comment on the Bollywood system: it should be noted that large sections of the audience seemed to find it all a good deal funnier and more interesting than I did.