Broadway's Bombay Dreams to Close on New Year's Day
Bombay Dreams tells the story of a handsome young slum-dweller and his dreams of becoming a Bollywood movie star. The musical contrasts the fantasy of the film world with the harsh realities of life on the streets of Bombay. Based on an idea by Shekhar Kapur and Andrew Lloyd Webber, Bombay Dreams features music by A.R. Rahman, lyrics by Don Black who is also the co-librettist and co-lyricist for Dracula, The Musical, which will close the day after Bombay Dreams and a book by Meera Syal and Thomas Meehan.
The show first opened in London on June 19, 2002 and closed there on June 13, 2004. While the London production featured a book just by Syal, Meehan revised the script before the show came to Broadway.
Bombay Dreams, directed by Steven Pimlott and choreographed by Anthony Van Laast and Farah Khan, opened at the Broadway on April 29, 2004 to mixed to negative reviews. In his Broadway.com Review of the piece, Ken Mandelbaum wrote: "Bombay Dreams was actually more appealing [in London] when little was explained, and the show was simply allowed to evince the giddy extremes, energy, and excess of a Bollywood movie. What slender fun there may have been in the original version has been seriously diminished... Throughout the new script, an attempt is made to explain away the banality of the plotting by making tongue-in-cheek comparisons between what's happening on stage and the conventions of Bollywood films. But making the show more self-aware only serves to expose the cardboard nature of the story, with its show-biz clichés and stereotypical characterizations. If the London version hardly ranked as a distinguished musical, it seemed to evince a certain carefree energy, functioning in the eccentrically haphazard fashion that Bollywood movies often do. The show was over-the-top and sweetly silly. The New York script is more sensible, but also blander and, by the second half, tedious. Doing things in a more professional manner has removed the exotic charm."
Recently the producers of Bombay Dreams tried to increase the box office by bringing in American Idol's Tamyra Gray for a limited engagement in the lead female role of Priya. However, since her addition there has been only slight movement in the grosses and last week the large theater was filled to only 56.34% on average.
In addition to Gray, Bombay Dreams stars Manu Narayan as Akaash, Anjali Bhimani as Rani, Yolande Bavan as Shanti, Sriram Ganesan as Sweetie, Marvin L. Ishmael as Madan and Deep Katdare as Vikram.
As previously reported, there is a film version of Bombay Dreams in the works. The production is also expected to tour next season.