Play That Back

Love for the classic Hollywood musical faded by the '70s, though rock-'n- roll era movie Grease was a big hit in 1978. Yet the musical is a resilient genre that lends itself to reinvention. Whenever an imaginative director like Bob Fosse (Cabaret and All that Jazz), Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge) or Rob Marshall (Chicago) comes along, the audiences' appetite is revived once more. Interestingly, the Hollywood musical has gone back full circle: recent Broadway hits like Billy Elliot, The Producers, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang etc are adapted from or inspired by movies. And whilst Western audiences have lost much of their interest in screen musicals, it is worth noting that on Broadway, 24 out of the current 30 shows are musicals. No surprise then that Andrew Lloyd Webber's Bombay Dreams (music by A.R. Rahman and choreography by Anthony Van Laast and Farah Khan) has had more mainstream success in the West than any Bollywood film has managed so far.