Britain’s Got Bhangra

Photo Credit - David Fisher

Britain’s Got Bhangra is written and directed by Pravesh Kumar of award-winning British Asian Theatre Company Rifco Arts. Rifco’s other productions include The Deranged Marriage, Happy Birthday Sunita and Break the Floorboards.

Britain's Got Bhangra is produced by Sell a Door Theatre Company, and was originally co-produced by Rifco Arts and Theatre Royal Stratford East in association with Warwick Arts Centre. Formed in 2007, Sell a Door creates touring productions aimed at engaging young adults in live theatre. Current productions include the UK Tours of Avenue Q, The History Boys and Jekyll and Hyde.

Britain’s Got Bhangra is written and directed by Pravesh Kumar, with music and Bhangra direction by Sumeet Chopra. English Lyrics are by Dougal Irvine with Punjabi lyrics by Bittu Denowalia.

David Hutchinson from Sell a Door Theatre said: "We are delighted to be opening our autumn season at Manchester Palace Theatre with this critically acclaimed smash hit musical. The writers have created a fantastic celebration of dance and culture within the modern narrative of a talented artist aspiring to fulfil their dreams. In the reality TV age, his story taps into the aspirations of so many, against the colourful backdrop of the British Asian community. We look forward to reaching out to new and returning audiences across the UK with Britain's Got Bhangra."

More on Cirque Berserk

I would be pushing my luck if I claimed that watching four men racing motorbikes around a steel cage provoked any deep questions, but Cirque Berserk did leave me pondering some questions. Most of all, I am trying to square my enthusiasm for this populist show with my pretentious love of bloody difficult art.

Does Tweedy - the clown - represent the struggles of the ordinary person in a hostile universe?

Tweedy would amble on-stage after the acrobats had wowed the crowd, and proceed to mess up his own versions of various tricks. He frequently lands on his genitals, making a funny face and probably ensuring that the Tweedy family tree wouldn't be continues into the next generation. Being a clown, he evokes sympathy by being vulnerable - and yet, he seems to offer an alternative humanity, laced with compassion, to the amazing prowess of the other acts.

How do I feel about sexy dancing girls?

There is no chance to write this off to post-modern irony. Whenever a set needs clearing, three women came on in revealing outfits and swayed to the music. It was deliberately distracting, and while fairly innocuous, it brings up that question about the place of women on stage: are they being exploited? Do the men get to be impressive and the women attractive? Asking them question seems to be against the spirit of the show, which is all about entertainment, earthy passion and excitement.

Is this just The Spectacle in action?

Of course it is spectacular, but is it all a big distraction, the spectacle that hides the machinations of the political class? Is emotional engagement actually as dangerous as Plato says it is, and the circus is a simulacrum, hiding the absence of truth and meaning?

Why can't I just have fun?

Macbeth (Filter) and Cirque Berserk

The Horror, The Horror

For a critic who prides himself on being a champion of the avant-garde, I seem to have written a great deal about The Rocky Horror Show. I interviewed writer Richard O'Brien before he set sail for his

'retirement' in New Zealand - he was completely charming and intriguing. I reviewed the previous production, and heard all sorts of stories about how the fans identified with the performers. Back when I was at school, there was a cult around the show, based mostly on doing the Timewarp in the common room. 

I'm probably old enough to realise that it was still subversive back then. 

I'll admit to a fondness for the production: in the light of Simon Reynold's Retromania, it reads as an early blast of 'nostalgia for the future': O'Brien designed it from the detritus of 1950s' science fiction and rock'n'roll's great ambitions. In the interview I did with him for The Skinny, he suggested that the anti-hero, Frank, represents a demonic figure, and the plot is basically a rip-off of that bit out of Genesis with the snake and and apple.

It sits between those juke-box musicals I hate - the songs are hits, but not stolen from a popular artist - and the more adventurous musicals like Avenue Q that don't fear a spot of subversion. Why, only last night the writer of Cannibal Women from Mars admitted its influence.

To be honest, I don't need to say much about it - it's coming back to the KIng's Theatre, Glasgow. Press release, finish my work....


Following the huge success of T 40th Anniversary Production at the King’s Theatre Glasgow in February and March 2013, the production is triumphantly returning between 6 – 10 August 2013 as part of its year-long run. Dani Harmer, finalist of Strictly Come Dancing 2012 and star of Tracy Beaker, will play the role of Janet. Ben Forster, who won the ITV1 series Superstar and then went on to play the lead in Jesus Christ Superstar, will star alongside Dani in the role of Brad. West End actor Oliver Thornton, follows in the footsteps of Tim Curry starring as the lead character of Frank ‘n’ Furter. Christopher Luscombe, who is the director of The Rocky Horror Show 40th Anniversary production, will play the role of the Narrator in his first acting role for over a decade.


Since its first appearance at the Royal Court Theatre in June 1973, Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Show has become the world’s favourite Rock N’ Roll musical. It has been performed worldwide for nearly 40 years in over 30 countries in every continent and has been translated into more than 20 languages. To celebrate the 40th anniversary, Christopher Luscombe has created a new production for a year-long UK tour.

The Rocky Horror Show tells the story of Brad and his fiancée Janet, two squeaky clean college kids who meet Dr Frank ’n’ Furter by chance when their car breaks down outside his house, whilst on their way to visit their former college professor. It is an adventure they’ll never forget, with fun, frolics, frocks, and frivolity, bursting with timeless songs and outrageous outfits. Directed by Christopher Luscombe, The Rocky Horror Show is a guaranteed party, which famously combines science-fiction, horror, comedy and music and encourages audience participation meaning, of course, getting dressed in your most outrageous fancy dress.



The Rocky Horror Show was first performed on 19 June 1973 at the Royal Court Theatre. It was an immediate success, transferring to three London theatres. It was transformed into a film in 1974 called ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’. This film adaptation took over $135 million at the Box Office and is still shown in cinemas around the world 38 years after its premiere, making it the longest running theatrical release in film history.


The Rocky Horror Show
Tue 6th – Sat 10 Aug
Tue – Thu eves , 8pm
Wed, Fri & Sat 5.30pm & 8.30pm

The Slash My Father Swore

The decision to play The Sash as a period drama, despite it recounting a relatively recent period of history, isn’t necessarily a confession that the script has lost its relevance. In the period after the Good Friday Agreement, the vivid descriptions of terrorist attacks and the sporadic racist references are more likely to connect to the current War on Terror and Islamophobia than the battle for a united Ireland, yet the core prejudices on display – sectarianism from protestant and Roman Catholic - are still, sadly, part of Glaswegian life.

Most strikingly, the obnoxious behaviour comes from both sides of the divide. The aging Orangeman is given the most melodramatic, and comic, bigotry, but his Catholic neighbour gets in a fair few digs. Even today, there is something outrageous about hearing this kind of language on stage and the message – that the conflict in Ireland was originally not about religion but freedom – is supported by both sides insistence on a loyalty to a parents’ values.

Perhaps the differences between 1973, when the play was written and set, and 2013 are in the aspirations of the younger characters. There is a rejection of older values, with a protestant son wanting to discuss the historical truth behind the myth of Good King Billy and the pregnant Catholic daughter rejecting the certainties of her faith’s moral teachings for a socialist alternative. And the rare reference to the Soviet ideal of Russia is jarring. The aftermath of the USSR might not have revealed the propaganda of the USA as accurate, but it undermined that nation as a shining example of universal brotherhood.

Yet the conflict between the generations, and the final failure to find an honorable solution, lends The Sash its relevance. Its vision of the Orange Order as a fading presence might have been premature, but the arguments between son and father have an almost archetypal ferocity. Snippets of information about William of Orange’s allegiances and conduct contextualise his hagiography by the Order into a brutal history, and the details of bombing in Ireland locate the action in a period when paramilitary activity was intense: yet the intergenerational throw downs could come from any year in the past fifty.

Because the conflicts described in The Sash `are still present in Glasgow, it doesn’t quite slip into a complete period drama: the issues are more immediate than those in the political plays from south of the border written in the same period. It carefully charts the way that political upheaval impacts on personal life. A relationship collapses, a father tumbles out of a window, a Catholic aunt berates her niece for being pregnant outside of wedlock and the vitality of Irish Republicanism and Orange Pride are gradually ossified.

The question of whether The Sash would make much sense outside of Scotland is pertinent: when intellectuals talk about Scottish identity, they conveniently ignore the sectarian divide even though it is one of the most distinctive qualities that distinguish English and Scottish cultures. There are enclaves in England, such as Manchester, that have a similar relationship to the past. However, the mutual loathing of Billy and Tim is rarely so noticeable in the south.

Rapture are being difficult by restaging this classic. It would be far easier to put The Sash in the same category as The Bigot and The Pavilion pantomime, relics of a by-gone age. Unfortunately, the numbers in the audience attest to its popularity, and the nihilistic vision of culture – nobody wins the argument, and only the final song, which insists that once men were “neither orange men nor green” is a tattered flag of hope – is a bracing counterblast to the optimistic predictions of the contemporary politician. Respecting the way that the play itself is awkward, being neither clearly political nor personal, historical nor contemporary, this production, Michael Emans lets the story tell itself, not even flinching at the unappetising attitudes it displays towards religion, women and the idealism of the young. 

She Plays

The Fringe has barely finished - well, I am still licking my wounds from it and hoping that I don't get ill after a month of sleeping on floors and eating on the run - and the Autumn seasons are starting up. There's even a few themes emerging, to give me a chance to create another idiosyncratic top five...

The strength of women is an oft-recorded part of recent Scottish history, at least as far as the theatre remembers it. The Steamie emphasised the importance of women's work in Glasgow in the 1950s, and two plays in Dundee celebrate the role of women in difficult times.

She-Town pretty much lays it all out in the title. An ambitious project from Dundee Rep, adding a cast of community performers alongside their core actors, it goes back to the depressed 1930s and highlights how women kept the city running. Starring Barbara Rafferty - best known for her TV work in Rab C Nesbit but has been a sparkling Scottish stage presence over the past decade - and a very large cast of women, Sharman MacDonald's new play is supported by a new Creative Scotland fund.

First in a Lifetime is designed to make work that opens up creativity to new people: this time, it has enabled community performers to appear in a professional production. Given that She-Town is all about  community, it's appropriate that this fund is supporting it.

12 - 29 September @ Dundee Rep


It's a bit cheeky to include Stellar Quines in my rundown of "theatre about women" - their remit has always been supportive to female artists. However, they have teamed up with Greyscale to run a tour by one of the world's oldest "new writers": Sylvia Dow is 73, and this is her first play.

A rehearsed reading last year revealed Dow's sensibility echoes the absurdism of Beckett, but with an added compassion and strong sense of contemporary anguish: while the early absurdist theatre entertained through a combination of lurking fear and the pointlessness of life, Dow pitches the horror of a relationship going nowhere, caught in the cycles of repressed hopes and polite reconciliations. It fits into both the Traverse's New Writing remit and the programming of Andy Arnold at the Tron (he loves a nice bit of absurdism), and Dow becomes an interesting take on the entire idea of "the young writer".

5- 8 September @ The Tron
18- 19 September at the Traverse

It's rare that I get out to the Brunton Theatre - although when I do, I get to go for a paddle in the sea and have an ice-cream from the lovely shop just across the road. The Brunton does have a programme that operates independently from the theatres in Edinburgh, featuring plenty of touring companies up from England.

Miriam Margoyles whetted my appetite for Dickens' Women at the Fringe, and the Brunton has followed up with Miss Havisham's Expectations. A one-woman show starring Linda Marlow (she once did Berkoff's Women, so will be familiar with the bloody end of female fictional characters), it takes up the story of Great Expectations and confronts the venerable Victorian author with the truth about the woman he trapped inside a moment.

Using biographical details from Dickens' life alongside the famous novel, Di Sherlock's script takes the writer to task for playing God with characters that he does not understand: and while adaptations can be a lazy way to make theatre, Miss Havisham's Great Expectations ignores the conventional period drama cliches and recontextualises one of fiction's great, lost tragic heroines.

Saturday 15 September @ Brunton Theatre

Next up, The Guid Sisters: I have talked about this already, but it is a bold start to the new season at the Lyceum. The NTS are involved, too, and it is one of the rare times that a piece starts at the Lyceum and doesn't force me to travel to Edinburgh to see it: it is coming to the King's, Glasgow, in October.

21 September - 13 October @ The Lyceum
23 - 27 October @ The King's, Glasgow 


Towards the end of next month, another project led by Cora Bissett (after Whatever Gets You Through the Night and Roadkill, she is becoming a force in Scottish production, even before looking at her acting) reveals a hidden history. The Glasgow Girls were seven young women who stood up for the rights of asylum seekers - a tough, political story that is perfect for a musical adaptation.

A script from David Greig and original songs from Bissett, MC Soom T and John Kielty (who has been perfecting the punk musical during the Fringe), the musical is no schmaltzy song-fest, but a celebration of the Glasgow that longs to find the true meaning of inclusion and multiculturalism. The NTS are involved again - the energy and imagination of the nation's big company is looking undiminished as it heads towards its eighth year - and both Bissett and Greig have reputations as hard-hitters.

31 October - 17 November @ The Citizens