So you hear the word “Bollywood” and think, hmm … isn’t that Lindsay Lohan’s slurred response when cops shine a flashlight on her in the wee hours of Saturday and ask where she lives?
If you don’t know the term is a fusion of “Bombay” and “Hollywood,” you also might not know Bombay hasn’t been called Bombay since 1997 (it’s Mumbai).
Still, “Bollywood” is the name ascribed to India’s exotic, campy and prolific film industry, which dates to 1913. It’s also the subject of “Bombay Dreams,” a fanciful new musical that takes place within the framework of a classic Bollywood film. That means it attempts to faithfully re-create on the stage all those elements that mark classic Bollywood films.
Never seen one? You’re not alone, at least on this half of the globe. On the other side, more than 1 billion people see approximately 900 new Bollywood films each year, making it the world’s largest film industry.
Deep Katdare, who stars in the touring production of “Bombay Dreams” that opens in Denver on Tuesday, checks off a list of the genre’s classic characteristics: Spectacle, glamour, melodrama, lusty romance, lush music, big dance numbers, colorful costumes and stock characters. You can count on a dashing hero, gorgeous heroine, nasty villain and a comic sidekick.
How to tell them all apart?
“You’ll always know the hero because his shirt is going to come off three or four times in the film,” Katdare said with a laugh. “You’ll know the heroine because she is going to get wet at least twice. You’ll know the villain because he is going to play it big like a villain, and the comic sidekick is going to be either really fat or really thin, and he’ll be running around bumping into things.”
How stock is stock? Katdare just completed a U.S. film called “Blind Ambition” with Indian actor Gulshan Grover. He’s a veteran of nearly 300 films since 1980, including 14 this year (and it’s only July).
Thanks to a driver whisking him from set to set, Grover will “shoot four scenes in four movies on the same day,” Katdare said. “I asked him how he keeps track of all the characters and stories, and he said, ‘Well, I basically play the same guy in every movie, so I don’t have to keep track of anything. All the movies are the same; we just mix stuff around.”‘
So the audience gets everything it could possibly want, with different permutations of actors and locations.
“Bombay Dreams” grew out of producer Andrew Lloyd Webber’s curiosity when he first heard the contemporary popular music of A.R. Rahman, who blends Western and Indian sounds. And when Webber gets curious, a million-dollar spectacle is sure to follow. The initial production opened in London in 2002, and a moderately successful Broadway followed in 2004 with a creative team that blended Rahman, other Indian artists and book writer Thomas Meehan, who also scripted “Hairspray.”
Classic Bollywood films are pure escapism and often are compared to Hollywood of the 1930s because of their similarities in style. But these are hardly dated knockoffs. “It would not surprise me if Bollywood filmmakers were inspired by old Hollywood movies,” Katdare said, “but certainly they are their own entity.”
If anything, the Bollywood influence now swings in both directions. The onslaught of satellite TV, cable and home video has made Indian films available around the world. Baz Luhrmann consulted with Bollywood vets in creating “Moulin Rouge.” And young Indian filmmakers are producing more U.S.-influenced mainstream fare like the worldwide phenomenon “Bend it Like Beckham.”
Classic Bollywood films, however, embrace universal themes and a melodramatic style specifically for their ability to communicate across Indian cultures.
“I think that’s because there is such a tremendous amount of diversity between ethnicities and languages in India,” Katdare said. “Not only that, but there is a great deal of illiteracy there, so in order to get a large population of the country to sit down and watch the same movie, you really do have to have a universal theme.”
They also expect length – as much as 3 1/2 hours worth.
“That’s because if people are paying 100 rupees (about $2.18 U.S.) to see a film, they can’t afford to go very often. So when they do, they want as much time in the theater as possible. The 90-minute American format would not work because they just laid out a substantial portion of their savings.
“And because people so rarely get to go see a movie, they want everything in one – an action movie, romance, comedy and musical.”
Katdare, born on a July 4 in Buffalo to Indian parents (his name means light, or, in his case, fireworks) plays the villain in “Bombay Dreams,” which takes place in and around a Bollywood film. That means it’s a light-hearted amusement with a standard Bollywood underlying theme about respecting elders and the importance of personal honor and sacrifice.
It’s the story of a poor young man who needs to raise money to save his family’s slum home from developers, so he sets out to become a Bollywood star and falls in love with a rich girl. But in true Bollywood tradition, the couple live happily ever after only after a villain comes between them and his grandparents weigh in.
“You are not going to see everything from a traditional Broadway musical standpoint, although there are elements that are the same,” Katdare said. “It’s music that you are not used to hearing on Broadway, and yet it is very powerful and evokes tremendous emotion.”
Co-star Sandra Allen, who was born in Taiwan and lived for a time in Broomfield and Aurora, said that’s exactly why she loves the show.
“I’m not what you would call a typical musical-theater person,” said Allen. “I’m not somebody who will be sitting in my car and pop in some show tunes on my way to work. But this is not your typical musical-theater music. It has a very Indian flavor to it, but … it is so accessible, and it could be to a fault.”
Bollywood songs, Katdare said, typically become the biggest hits in the country, in much the way Broadway show tunes dominated radio airwaves in the 1950s. Rahman scored “Bombay Dreams” as a kind of ethnic pop amalgam.
“If anyone has any hesitation about going
because they don’t know anything about India or Bollywood, they should definitely not worry about that because it really is accessible,” Katdare said, citing Huntsville Ala., as one of the tour’s most receptive crowds. “And that shocked me, boy,” he said. “I thought it was going to be a rough road, but they were the nicest people.
“I would just think of this show as giving you a taste of India, much like ‘The King & I’ gave you a taste of the kingdom of Siam. It’s just pure fun.”
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-820-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
“Bombay Dreams”
MUSICAL|National touring production|Music by A.R. Rahman, lyrics by Don Black|Buell Theatre at the Denver Performing Arts Complex, 14th and Curtis streets|THROUGH JULY 23| Opens Tuesday, then 8 p.m. Monday-Friday, 2 p.m. Thursday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday| $25-65|303-893-4100, 866-464-2626 or denvercenter.org (800-641-1222 outside Denver)
