Review: Bollywood Jane, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, until June 30

10:38am Saturday 9th June 2007

THE International Indian Film Awards this weekend have prompted a joyous summer hit at a West Yorkshire Playhouse ablaze with sunflowers.

The first-ever staging of the Bollywood award ceremony in Yorkshire was the spur for Nikolai Foster's fantastic yet fiery revival of Amanda Whittington's escapist musical drama, premiered in Leicester in 2003, and now at home in the big, open Quarry Theatre.

As you may recall from Ladies' Day at York Theatre Royal, Whittington writes broad, emotional, entertaining stories that tug at the heart, and bring out the smile and the tears in equal measure.

Where Ladies' Day had the rising, falling rhythm of a day's horse races, Bollywood Jane has the energising impact of Indian cinema, and its spectacular costumes, epic romance and ensemble dancing.

The British grey grind of A Taste Of Honey underpins the pageantry, charm and escapism of Bollywood in the story of Jane (Nichola Burley), 16 and on the move again with her hard, debt-troubled single mum, Kate (York actress Katherine Dow Blyton).

On Colin Richmond's revolving stage, which emphasises the sense of lives speeding out of control, we first see the dusty chandelier, peeling wallpaper and romantic Bollywood posters of the faded Star cinema in Bradford, replaced at the spin of life's wheel by the single bulb, rudimentary furnishings and bare walls of the latest bleak refuge for the fractious mother and daughter.

Jane escapes into Bollywood fantasy and hope, drawn in by Dini (Darren Kuppan), an impulsive, cheeky dreamer who persuades cinema proprietor Aamir (Avin Shah) to give the spirited Kate work experience. As she and Dini watch excerpts from the 1990s Bollywood classic Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge on the wide screen, Kate sees a life she craves.

The string-pulling Whittington switches between the reality and the fantasy, sweeter than East Is East but always with just enough grit, especially in the terrific, desperate scenes between Burley and Dow Blyton, less so in the tentative, secret relationship of Dini and Aamir.

Burley and Kuppan, so alive and exciting in every scene, make wonderfully impressive debuts, not least contributing thrillingly and playfully to Zoobin Surty's exuberant Bollywood dance sequences.

Out goes the kitchen sink, in comes the fabulously kitsch-in-synch, as 20 community dancers - some from York, by the way - dazzle with vibrant, snappy, uninhibited routines, first as radiant sunflowers, later as snowflakes. Cinema and theatre magic in tandem.

Box office: 0113 213 7700

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