Did High School Musical teach us nothing? Sport and theatre don’t mix. Sadly Bend It Like Beckham does little to disprove this theory.
At its core, the show isn’t really about football at all,
but there’s still very little sport involved. That’s largely because it’s so
difficult to recreate the beautiful game on a stage; instead we have aerobics
style choreography to cover up for a lack of ball skills and some hilarious “effects”
such as a ball being flown around the stage, or being represented by a bouncing spotlight. The sport element of the show is as authentic as the Beckham
lookalike who appears in a dream sequence and clumsily hides his face from the
audience.
Deep down there’s an excellent and very credible story here.
Directed by Gurinder Chadha and based on her own 2002 film that helped to
launch the acting career of Keira Knightley’s chin, it follows eighteen year
old Jess Bhamra as she joins a women’s football team in Southall, London, against the
permission of her staunchly traditional Indian parents. It pulls in multiple
themes that thirteen years later still resonate: the Asian diaspora struggling
to integrate into British culture, issues of multi-cultural society, the
generational divide of Indian families. It’s also very easy to read a
homosexual narrative into the plot, something that’s blatantly referenced
throughout.
Unfortunately, the show tries to achieve too much. It’s too
long, there are too many characters, too many songs and a lack of subtlety as
it succumbs too easily to musical theatre cheese. For the most part, it relies
on clichéd and dated stereotypes of London teenagers and Indian pensioners. If you’re
expecting Bollywood spectacle, think again. At times it feels like watching a
live episode of The Kumars at No. 42,
the audience laughing at unfunny stereotypes – as awkward as Jamie Campbell
Bowers’ wooden acting as football coach Joe. The themes may be relevant, but
the plot hasn’t been updated from its 2001 setting – it's meant to be a period piece, but it already feels dated.
There’s certainly great potential for this story to be told
through music and song, in particular through East-meets-West musical styles.
Too often, though, the music and choreography add little to the plot beyond
overstating, with far too many reprises that serve only to pad out the already
lengthy three hour run-time. The show is currently still in previews, but it
definitely needs a good trim.
Howard Goodall’s score fails to live up to that potential,
though. A handful of traditional Indian songs are beautifully performed (the
mournful pre-wedding night song in particular), but shoe-horning a Tabla drum
and a Tanpura beneath Western theatre songs with the odd bit of traditional
singing doesn’t cut it. There’s a distinct lack of choruses to many of the
songs, whilst others overlap and splice multiple melodies together so much as
to be incomprehensible. It’s as if Goodall is trying to be too clever, without delivering
an actual tune. The odd moment of Bhangra does liven things up with some
exciting and joyful choreography, but for the most part Goodall plays it
stylistically safe.
The songs are, at least, performed well by a talented cast:
Natalie Dew as the calm Jess caught between cultures; Preeya Kalidas as her
bridezilla sister; and Lauren Samuels as headstrong tomboy Jules. The young cast
especially are endearing, lending the show as a whole a strong likeability
factor, though whether you’ll be laughing at rather than with them is up for
debate.
If there’s one scene that sums up the best and worst of the
show it’s the aforementioned dream sequence. As with the ballet from Oklahoma!, there’s high potential for
storytelling with Jess caught between East and West, but there are too many
melodies in this clash of cultures – not to mention a dancing David Beckham
with a dodgy haircut. If this is meant to be Bollywood with balls it doesn’t have
enough of either; instead it’s just awkwardly British.
2/5
Watch: Bend It Like Beckham
runs at the Phoenix Theatre, with booking until October 2015. The show
officially runs from 24th June.
