REVIEW: Taj Express a bombastic bonafide Bollywood bonanza!
Last year, India’s Bollywood film industry sold more tickets than Hollywood. The plots of these films are as thin as a Bombay fakir but are tricked out in massive production numbers featuring a combination of traditional and modern elements. The films tend not to take themselves seriously, are self-aware, funny, bright and entertaining. Because of their success in the Western world they have even created their own language – a combination of English and Hindi called “Hinglish.” Bollywood stars, inevitably handsome and beautiful, are given a God-like status back home in India.
North American audiences tend to find most of the films the same and inconsequential – but they do pop up in our theatres from time to time. Their influence can also be seen in such mainstream Western productions as Slumdog Millionaire.
Taj Express – named after a bone-rattling Indian speed train – is a Bollywood film transported to the stage and put together by India’s Merchant Family film conglomerate. The Mumbai-based troupe has performed the show some 700 times, mostly to sold out houses and rave reviews. Now they’ve settled in at the Jubilee Auditorium, kicking off Alberta Ballet’s season with a spectacular Friday night show, with one more on Saturday, Oct. 5.
The glitzy two-and-a-half hours is a rowdy extravaganza that leaps across international borders, combing art and commerce. The production promises “unbelievable story lines, melodramatic acting, and terrible jokes” – and proceeds to deliver just that. Before the show begins a voice warns us, “If you came to enjoy great theatre – you should leave now.”
The costumes are spectacular, the performers talented, hard-working, athletic and alluring. The music and dance is infectious. The results may seem repetitive to western sensibilities – the costumes and exotic props may change but the moves stay much the same – however there is so much going on you don’t really notice.
The rickety plot has Shankar (Ninad Samaddar), a young composer of jingles (and our genial narrator), getting his first shot at writing a Bollywood musical. The production uses the technique that worked so well in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical – as the composer writes the songs, they come alive on the stage. A musical within the musical quickly develops as the lovely Bollywood star, Kareena (Tanvi Patil), must tear herself away from glittery stardom to find who she really is in the arms of a poor charity worker, Arjun (Rajitdev Easwardas). Arjun rescues young runaways from street gangs and reclaims them through the use of – guess what? – dance.
The old-fashioned mogul-type producer demands a fight sequence and the tunesmith must comply. The result borrows liberally from the battle between the Jets and the Sharks from West Side Story, and Taj Express cheerfully pilfers stuff from anything that works. Shankar learns, through his efforts, that he must find his own musical voice. The show features some of the songs of the prolific A.R. Rahman – the Irving Berlin of Bollywood.
Dance styles range from classic Indian through what appears to be equally classic western ballet to contemporary and encompasses emotions from earthy to euphoric – even ethereal. The music (largely pre-recorded but with three live musicians on stage) is diverse: disco, rock, hip-hop, classical Indian and pop – even a tango and a good old fashioned waltz. There are a number of bumps and grinds that would not be out of place at Chez Pierre. All are delivered at a frenzied pace and with phenomenal precision by the 21-person cast of actor-dancers.
Are we to take any of this seriously? Nope! How seriously can you take a production where the leading lady is named Kareena Kaboom, the flutist Harry Putter and the percussionist Animal (after the terminally cool Muppet drummer). The guitarist (Chandan Raina) is a complete orchestra by himself, and at one point tears off a paint-peeling Van Halen-style guitar riff. He is also the house comic, keeping things current, throwing in a music reference to Game of Thrones while telling the requisite jokes about Donald Trump and The Kardashians.
Taj Express’s visuals are overpowering and never stop. There’s a back screen packed with vibrant images, there are disco lights and non-stop costume changes. The costumes are of vibrant gold and silver glitter; saffron, orange, turmeric and fiery reds and oranges whirl about the stage, and there’s enough bling to impress RuPaul. articularly remarkable is a huge rolling kaleidoscope behind the dancers for the final number.
Joyously over the top, raucous, bawdy and celebrating its own cheesiness, Taj Express is a kinetic non-stop evening of guilty pleasure. On Friday night, the audience loved it and leapt to its feet in a ringing standing ovation.
The show plays again tonight (Saturday, Oct. 5).
