Bronte Bollywood

THE race is on to find a Bollywood movie with the international clout of Mamma Mia! and ex- EastEnders actor Deepak Verma feels he has a frontrunner with a stage musical based on Emily Bronte’s novel Wuthering Heights.

“This is a romance which transcends any lifetime, it’s something that will be there forever.

It’s a great parallel to all the beliefs in Indian culture. The British social hierarchy in which this is set is like the Indian caste system,” he says of the storyline of the poor boy who can never marry a rich man’s daughter.

North-East theatregoers can judge for themselves next week when the turbulent romance of Heathcliff and Cathy, reset from the Yorkshire Moors to the desert of Rajasthan and starring Krishan (Pushpinder Chani) and Shakuntala (Youkti Patel), arrives at Northern Stage from Wednesday to Saturday. “I love the story of a character who changes the whole balance. In this case, Krishan/Heathcliff goes away to become a bigger man than the one Cathy marries because he wants her so much. The whole thing is a feast for the senses and we’ve set it in the most colourful and exciting part of India,”

says Verma,.

This is Verma’s second project with the Tamasha company and artistic director Kristine Landon-Smith, who first captured the attention of the world with East is East in 1999. The two worked on Ghostdancing, an Indian reworking of Zola’s Therese Raquin, about lovers murdering a husband, before gaining Oldham Coliseum and Lyric Hammersmith backing for Wuthering Heights.

Designer Sue Mayes travelled to Rajasthan to research the set and costumes and Felix Cross and Sheema Mukherjee have composed the music weaving in authentic folklore tunes.

Verma is still famous to millions as the womanising market trader Sanjay Kapoor but, since he left the wiles of Walford in 1998, the actor has also moved into writing and TV and film production as boss of Pukkanasha Films. He’s just spent five days at the Cannes Film Festival pitching his own romantic comedy Johnny Bollywood and seeking backers for Wuthering Heights the movie.

“I’m not a musician but the story, the book and the idea were all mine. I did need the help of a lyricist. We then picked out the parts of the book we wanted and focused on turning them into a musical. The great thing about Tamasha and Kristine Landon- Smith, who is also directing, is that she is very forward thinking. The company has created the Bollywood bandwagon that others are jumping on. We’re keen to take it further and we’re already working on taking it into the West End. I’m also putting together a movie project,” adds Verma, who spent four years bringing Wuthering Heights to the stage.

“I could never be just an actor, although I have been, I’ve got a lot of good stories I want to bring to the world. Sometimes you have to go where the love is… and at the moment everyone is pushing this project.

Wuthering Heights will be filmed in India but we’re still in negotiations to see if its going to be an Indian, British or American production team. It’s like the Bollywood Mamma Mia! but even if it’s two per cent successful as that we’ll be happy,” he says.

Verma will be unhappy with an international cast approach and points out that Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire didn’t set out to become a worldwide success. “It was an Indian film about an Indian character, but it broke out because it had integrity and Danny Boyle is an amazing director,” says the globetrotting film company boss who is heading for New York next.

He worries that the UK TV still reflects Asians as stereotypes and remains grateful that EastEnders allowed Sanjay to become “a bit of a ducker and diver who could have been any colour. Subsequently, however, we’ve had characters who are Indian for the sake of being Indian because of the token thing. Then again I can count the number of good Asian writers on two fingers. There aren’t any good writers in my opinion.”