Volume 25 Issue 4 - December 2019 / January 2020

not the only element,” so he said yes. He soon found an associate, “a
wonderful chap named Kuljit Bhamra” who would supply the Indian
percussion and became what Goodall described as “my tutor, in a
way, for the Indian aspect of the score.” This was essential, Goodall
says, to avoid any of the music feeling like a pastiche of another
culture’s sounds; he “passionately wanted to absorb all those influences
and then write from within myself the music that belongs to
each character.”
From the song for Jess’ parents when we first meet the parental
generation, “the ones whose sacrifices made everything possible,”
which is reminiscent of the Indian diaspora, to the lyrical anthemic
solo for Jess, Glorious, which runs through the piece, to the “more
pop-y, thriving rhythmic sounds for the football matches,” all the
music is based on character and story, “not a copy of anything, not
at all anchored to the film’s exact time period, but aiming to create
a musical world that only belongs to this piece – so that it belongs
to these people in this place, to who they are and their feelings at
this moment.”
Part of the process to achieve this goal was the usual one in musical
theatre: holding multiple workshops to zoom in on various aspects of
the show, from a simple piano-and-singers workshop to fine tune the
narrative and score, to a unique workshop where they “got together
with some dancers and the England Women’s Football Team, the
Lionesses, to try and work out how to do the football.”
This, Goodall says, was something that had to be solved through
movement and dance, but it also had to be solved musically and structurally,
“particularly as the great climax of the story, onstage, as in the
film, is when Jess is playing in a final football match at the same time
as her sister is getting married. In a movie you can cut between the
two as much as you like and in the audience’s mind these two things
are happening simultaneously. You can’t really do that onstage. So,
in the end, how we achieved a similar effect was by my creating a
wedding/football final that was one huge piece of music where all the
different songs and themes from the football and Sikh wedding, and
all the other characters from earlier in the story, were interwoven into
a great vertical climax, with everything layered on top of each other
and happening at the same time – and that of course is the wonderful
alchemy of musical theatre.”
This became one of the things the creative team was most proud of
in their original world premiere production in London’s West End in
2015 (that ran for almost a year to full houses and critical acclaim). It
will feature again in the Toronto production currently in rehearsal.
This new production in Toronto came about through an invitation
to Chadha from Canadian Corey Ross, CEO of Starvox
Entertainment, who saw and loved the show in London. Chadha and
the team agreed: as she said, “the movie originally launched at TIFF
years ago, so I thought it was a great idea, and that people in Toronto
would understand and appreciate the sentiments of the show.” The
new production is also giving the creators the chance to fine tune
the musical in preparation for a potential further life on tour in
North America and around the world. To do so they have assembled
a new international team that includes Canadians Madeline Paul
(director), Mark Camilleri (music director), Sue LePage (set designer)
Sean Mulcahy (costume designer), John Lott (sound designer) and –
to heighten the excitement of the football matches – the new choreographic
team of Daniel Ezralow (Sochi Olympics) and Longinus
Fernandes (Slumdog Millionaire). Chadha is overseeing the whole as
artistic producer, and composer Howard Goodall is working with the
team non-stop, though mostly online from London. The cast is also
almost entirely Canadian with a couple of performers from
New York, and one from London.
Bend It Like Beckham: The Musical begins performances on
December 7 and runs to January 5 at the Bluma Appel Theatre at the
St Lawrence Centre: benditmusical.com.
Jennifer Parr is a Toronto-based director, dramaturge, fight director,
and acting coach, brought up from a young age on a rich mix of
musicals, Shakespeare and new Canadian plays.
From L to R: Charles Hart, Gurinder Chadha and Howard Goodall
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thewholenote.com December 2019 / January 2020 | 21