There is something a touch presumptuous about Bombay Dreams. It mockingly contrasts the glittering fantasy of Bollywood movies with the grim reality of Bombay life.Yet what else is a lavish £4.5m musical like this if not an invitation to enter a world of dreams and escape?
The contradictions are evident in Meera Syal's clumsy, over-plotted book. It presents us with a slum hero, Akaash, who dreams of becoming a Bollywood star. Plucked by a movie mogul from obscurity when he improbably improvises a song and dance during an anti-Miss World protest, Akaash achieves his aim. He becomes a star, falls in love with the movie producer's daughter and even takes on a tough Mafia boss. But having applauded him for his ambition, the musical then castigates him for turning his back on his lowly origins.
This kind of ambivalence runs all through the show. On the one hand, we are clearly meant to admire the producer's daughter who wants to make something superior to the average star-crossed lovers Bollywood movie with its lavish musical interludes. Yet much the best bits of Bombay Dreams, and of AR Rahman's score, come when the stage is given over to just such a choreographed fiesta. The highlight is a post-interval number, Chaiyya Chaiyya, when the stage explodes with thrilling percussive music and a cascade of pink-turbaned dancers expertly drilled by Anthony van Laast and Farah Khan.
In short Bombay Dreams is at its best when it sticks close to the formula it derides. In the first half there is a typically rousing Rahman number, Shakalaka Baby, staged against a studio set of a rose-red palace replete with dancing fountains: absurd but strangely beautiful. And at the end the hero routs the heavy villain with a martial expertise worthy of Bruce Lee. All this is fun: what is harder to take is the notion of the Bombay back streets filled with happy dancing slum dwellers.
But if the show's best effects are at odds with its liberal aims, it offers constant optical pleasures. Steven Pimlott's production wittily acknowledges the baroque cinematic environment of the Apollo Victoria, and Mark Thompson's designs are a delight.
Raza Jaffrey and Preeya Kalidas as the romantic leads also have charm and sex appeal, but the acting honours are stolen by such familiar British-Asian performers as Raad Rawi as the white-coated Mafia boss and Shelley King as an astringent gossip colum nist. What I shall take from the show, however, is the sight and sound of the deliriously dotty Bollywood set-pieces: the kind of pop spectacle Syal's story affects to scorn.
· Booking until September 29. Box office: 0870 400 0650.
