A. R. Rahman and Don Black's Bombay Dreams, a musical about a love story set in India, opens at London's Apollo Victoria on June 19.
The musical is one of the most eagerly anticipated in the West End this year, as its Indian setting and the use of British Asian performers represents a new trend in the British musical.
As Andrew Lloyd Webber, who is producer of the show, said in a documentray broadcast last night, there are very few new musicals currently in London: They tend to be revivals or new shows built around old songs.
Bombay Dreams bucks this trend in that the music has been specially written for it by Indian composer A. R. Rahman with lyrics by Oscar-winning British veteran Don Black, who is more used to working with Lloyd Webber as a composer than a producer.
—By Paul Webb Theatrenow