Theatre: Merchants of Bollywood

Merchants of Bollywood. Canberra Theatre, 5 March 2010

By Michael de Percy

16 March 2010: I love all things Bollywood - the colours, the dancing, and especially the music. The Merchants of Bollywood has all these things. I also like how Bollywood parodies Hollywood. But there was just something about this production that didn’t quite work.

The plot follows the story a woman who leaves her grandfather’s dance school to make it in Bollywood (as her grandfather had done before), only to become dissatisfied with the emerging Bollywood culture and to return to take over her grandfather’s school on her own terms.

It’s Bollywood – nobody is expecting a killer story, but one character put me off the whole thing.

It seems innocuous enough, but there is a male dancer who appears to be a lead, but plays a character who doesn’t really fit into the story. He plays a starring ‘position’ on the stage, but never a starring role.

For what he lacks in height, this guy has striking abs. You might think well, ‘so what?’ But after two hours of his abs poking you in the eye at every opportunity, you start to wonder why he is there.

The guy’s acrobatic abilities are world class – genuine Cirque du Soleil material – but his part seems designed purely so that his abs can dominate the spotlight. In fact, if his part wasn’t there, it would not have affected the plot at all.

Sure, his six-pack might make me self-conscious of my keg, but each time this guy appeared on stage, I kept thinking to myself ‘Why are you here?’

There were some stellar performances from a pair of traditional drummers, the lead female, and the narrator. I was in two minds about the backdrop which was a large-pixel display – an uneasy cross between Saturday Night Fever and Tron. All of the dancers were fantastic; the colours and costumes spectacular; the music sublime.

But those abs put me off the whole thing.

A London Metro review of the Merchants of Bollywood remarked: ‘Taut and buff bodies glisten... [and the] visual appeal is as slick and sexy as any MTV promo’.

I didn’t get that vibe.

Indeed, I thought the Merchants of Bollywood could have done without Mr Abs’ character. This character belongs on the Benny Hill Show - the show which no doubt influenced the London Metro reviewer’s concept of ‘slick and sexy’.