Big numbers, little appeal

LONG gone are the days when American movies contained Busby Berkeley’s human kaleidoscopes or Fred and Ginger’s swirling forms, but big song-and-dance numbers live on in India, where they are a vital part of many popular films.

That pulse-pumping tradition is meant to propel “Bombay Dreams,” a stage musical jammed with numbers by the respected Indian film composer A.R. Rahman. The versions of the show attempted in London, New York and now on tour, however, haven’t been able to establish what seems an otherwise inevitable connection between Indian films and Western stage musicals. If and when the right project comes along, the infusion of energy from the East could be electrifying. In the meantime, we must make do with the production that is launching its North American tour at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

A pet project of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s, “Bombay Dreams” emerged from the British impresario’s fascination with Rahman’s music. Tonally and rhythmically complex, that music fuses Indian classical music and Western pop, with salsa, jazz and other styles percolating among the techno drum beats and traditional Indian percussion. The most infectious numbers are lifted from film scores: the Top 40-ready “Shakalaka Baby” and the swaying, propulsive “Chaiyya Chaiyya.” But Rahman wrote mostly original material for the stage musical, on which Lloyd Webber retains a co-credit for coming up with the idea.

The plot, apparently meant to playfully emulate many of the movies that emerge from Hollywood’s Bombay counterpart, is a rehash of long-established plot devices, intended as mere pretext for spectacle. So the script by Meera Syal and Thomas Meehan presents the story of Akaash (Sachin Bhatt), a young man from Bombay’s slums who dreams of fame in the movies. He is loved, of course, by a neighborhood girl, the twist here being that the girl is a eunuch named Sweetie (Aneesh Sheth). Akaash falls in love, though, with a glamorous woman from the outside world, here the aspiring filmmaker Priya (Reshma Shetty). Of course, he gets his big chance.

The show, which ran for two years in London, was reworked for its Broadway presentation, which lasted just eight months. It has been further redone here, with some songs and scenes having been moved to new places.

As theatergoers take their seats, movie excerpts of Rahman’s songs, including “Shakalaka Baby,” play on a big screen, showing us how the numbers should be done. And when the show begins, this new staging by director Baayork Lee and choreographer Lisa Stevens works best when the music is thumping. The big numbers dazzle with their unison moves, performed en masse -- side-to-side head pops, windmilling arms and bent-kneed leg pumps.

When the movement stops, however, the show dies. The cast, though young and attractive, has neither the charisma nor the chops to sell this thin material on dazzle alone. Complicating matters, the production, in its first tour stop, is still in shakedown mode, with numerous awkwardnesses and glitches occurring during Tuesday’s opening.

Then too, there are sequences that probably ought to be rethought. “Shakalaka Baby” incorporates what is often referred to as a “wet sari” scene, in which dancers are drenched with water. The geyser-producing contraption used here all but drowns the cast and necessitates long minutes of cleanup by a small army of mop-pushers, distracting from the dialogue scene that follows.

The London cast album of “Bombay Dreams” sounded fantastic. Listeners captivated by it will sure wonder what went wrong.

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‘Bombay Dreams’

Where: Orange County Performing Arts Center,

600 Town Center Drive,

Costa Mesa

When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sundays

Ends: March 5

Price: $20 to $65

Contact: (714) 556-2787 or www.ocpac.org

Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes