Precious Bazaar opened to a staggering audience on Friday 20 August at The City Varieties in Leeds. Bradford's Alhambra saw Yeh Hai Mumbai Meri Jaan open earlier this year, which was a similar affair, but Precious Bazaar takes the edge when compared. One of the first few all-singing, all-dancing all-Bollywood melodramatic stage-shows of its kind, Precious Bazaar is indeed precious. The story revolves around Suhani (Rakhee Thakrar), a young ambitious British Asian journalist who is at odds with her culture and tradition. She has a fiancé, Amar (Mark Khutan), who is also ambitious but more traditional and one who understands Asian values. But he is also one of the causes that forces Suhani to go to India, against her will, to investigate a story. While in India, she clashes with the values that she was so against and is forced to succumb to them so that she may rescue three courtesans, from the clutches of a money-motivated brothel instructor, Vyjanti Devi (Jetender Kaur). Along the way, her relationship with Amar crumbles (and others bloom), but, like most Bollywood movies, everything must be put right – but with a twist! Apart from some very obvious mistakes made by the technicians on the night, this piece of light-hearted Asian melodrama is a good substitute if you like Bollywood but can't stand them to be three hours long! The music was excellently relevant and situational (Bally Sagoo and Raghav), with some very prominently classical Bollywood renditions being played throughout. The song and dance sequences too were quite impressive in such a small space and the humour provided by the character of Kasoro (Jaimal Mistry) was amusing at first but largely unnecessary. The performances on the whole were strong, especially those of Rakhee and Mark but the lip-synching of songs was not up-to-scratch and even poor. On the whole, however, it was an above-average affair with it appealing more to the Asian rather than non-Asian audience, simply because some knowledge of Bollywood movies and Hindi were required to fully understand all that was taking place on stage. I would recommend this one! The production will run until Saturday 16 October at various locations across the UK.
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