Bollywood Wedding: fabulous counterpoint

Vancouver: Powered by ecstatic dance, saturated with colour, and exquisitely staged, Bollywood Wedding is a unique midsummer spectacle. Featuring twenty-four dancers, thirteen actors, a full band, and three individual musicians, it was not only colourful but also a busy affair.

Staged at multiple locations throughout Hastings Park, the play revolves around the upcoming nuptials of the awkward Hanuman Singh, a bashful Canadian groom of Punjabi extraction. He is accompanied on his matrimonial journey by his playboy cousin Bobby; his hoyden sister Twinky; and his parents, Mr and Mrs Singh. Representing the Indian state of Gujarat is the reluctant bride Sunayna, a diminutive woman with a fiery temperament. She is escorted by her sweet tempered sister Amisha, a recent divorcee; their flamboyant brother Janak; their father Mr. Patel and his German wife Ingabord Frieda Patel. Rounding out the mix is an MC of boundless comic talent and a senile grandmother who scatters mystical aphorisms like confetti.

From the moment that they meet it is apparent that Hanuman and Sunayna are a mismatch. Mr. Patel provided his daughter with a photo of her prospective husband, but since he acquired it though a Google search, the inevitable has happened: he has found a picture of the wrong man. When the bride turns the picture towards the audience, we greeted by a life-sized image of the well groomed CBC news anchor Ian Hanomansing. Sunayna's disappointment leaves her speechless – it is all that she can throw back her head and wail in disappointment. Hanuman Singh is left quaking in his blue and yellow Adidas sneakers.

Sly jokes, bad puns and groaners abound in this play. The sharp tongued MC harangues slower members of the audience – you sir in the sunglasses – and makes sly quips about race, religion, Indian and North American culture.  She is in no way inhibited by political correctness and none escape her acerbic wit.

Bollywood Wedding is built on the well-worn premise that love is capricious and families are a royal headache.  At the end of the evening the couple getting married is the one least expected to do so.  Meanwhile Sunayna embraces independence and Hanuman Sing finds his soul mate in the bride's sister Amisha, whose love of Star Wars is paralleled by his own.

What is most exceptional about this play is the dancers: their energy never flags. Dressed in saris and scarves of every hue and colour, they jump up on tables, tumble over stages, leap from behind potted plants and pillars, and come pouring across the hillside. Their performances serve as a fabulous counterpoint to the plot. Leavened with the dancing, it too becomes a piece of well-timed choreography: each plot-point falls into place with clockwork precision, so that when the happy ending draws near, the audience is satisfied that this is indeed the best of all possible worlds.

The audience of two hundred was incorporated into the play as wedding guests. They were moved to five different locations over the course of the evening. These included a narrow stone alley; the crown of a hill – used first as staging for the performers then as seating for the guests; a play-area installed with a statue of a sacred cow; and a water fountain with stone pillars, where veiled dancers made their turns by candle light. The stewards whose job it was to move the audience handled their roles as shepherds of humans with grace but there were inevitable bottle-necks as the assembled crowd tried to file through archways and over staircases. These traffic jams were the only significant glitch in an otherwise smooth performance.