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| Bend It Like Beckham to be made into musical | Bend It Like Beckham to be made into musical |
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| It was the film that launched the careers of Keira Knightley and Parminder Nagra, while also bringing issues such as interracial relationships, sexual identity and religion to mainstream cinema audiences. | It was the film that launched the careers of Keira Knightley and Parminder Nagra, while also bringing issues such as interracial relationships, sexual identity and religion to mainstream cinema audiences. |
| Now, 12 years after the box office success of Bend It Like Beckham, the tale of a football-infatuated London Sikh teenager who defies her parents and joins a local women’s team has been turned into a stage musical which will open next May. | Now, 12 years after the box office success of Bend It Like Beckham, the tale of a football-infatuated London Sikh teenager who defies her parents and joins a local women’s team has been turned into a stage musical which will open next May. |
| But while the story will still be set in 2001, the coincidence of the musical’s opening date next year, just weeks after Britain goes to the polls, is not lost on Gurinder Chadha, the award-winning director of the film and now the musical, which she identifies as a “state of the nation piece”. | But while the story will still be set in 2001, the coincidence of the musical’s opening date next year, just weeks after Britain goes to the polls, is not lost on Gurinder Chadha, the award-winning director of the film and now the musical, which she identifies as a “state of the nation piece”. |
| “We are opening in the year of the election and there are enough people out there who will be using race as a divisive mechanism during the election process, which traditionally and historically always happens, as we know,” she told the Guardian. | “We are opening in the year of the election and there are enough people out there who will be using race as a divisive mechanism during the election process, which traditionally and historically always happens, as we know,” she told the Guardian. |
| “What we are trying to do is make a stakehold for those of us who believe we live in a brilliant nation that is all the better for being as diverse and as interesting culturally as it is, and that it isn’t just one community that has created this.” | “What we are trying to do is make a stakehold for those of us who believe we live in a brilliant nation that is all the better for being as diverse and as interesting culturally as it is, and that it isn’t just one community that has created this.” |
| The story centres on two 18-year-old girls who set out to make careers as professional footballers despite their families’ best efforts to stop them. The result was a box office smash which grossed $60m (£32m) in the US and went on to set a precedent when it became the first western-made film to be broadcast on television in North Korea. | The story centres on two 18-year-old girls who set out to make careers as professional footballers despite their families’ best efforts to stop them. The result was a box office smash which grossed $60m (£32m) in the US and went on to set a precedent when it became the first western-made film to be broadcast on television in North Korea. |
| The film was a launchpad for Nagra, who secured a US television role in ER, while Knightley became an Oscar-nominated star. Its director, who also made the romantic musical Bride and Prejudice, said that while she has always loved the genre, she had until now resisted the suggestion Bend it Like Beckham be given the musical treatment. | The film was a launchpad for Nagra, who secured a US television role in ER, while Knightley became an Oscar-nominated star. Its director, who also made the romantic musical Bride and Prejudice, said that while she has always loved the genre, she had until now resisted the suggestion Bend it Like Beckham be given the musical treatment. |
| She added: “I thought that I’d leave it and I went to see Billy Elliot, which I loved. As time went on I realised how significant I thought [Bend It] had been in terms of race relations in this country, the presence of the Asian community and how very little came after it in the same way that celebrated who we are as a nation. | |
| “I went to see Billy Elliot again and I was doubly moved because I loved how it had crystallised a particular moment in British history and thought, ‘Hold on, I might have been mistaken.’” | “I went to see Billy Elliot again and I was doubly moved because I loved how it had crystallised a particular moment in British history and thought, ‘Hold on, I might have been mistaken.’” |
| Casting will be announced shortly for the musical, which will play at the Phoenix Theatre in London. Tickets will go on sale on 7 November. Original music for the show, produced by Sonia Friedman, has been written by Howard Goodall, with lyrics by Charles Hart. | Casting will be announced shortly for the musical, which will play at the Phoenix Theatre in London. Tickets will go on sale on 7 November. Original music for the show, produced by Sonia Friedman, has been written by Howard Goodall, with lyrics by Charles Hart. |
| Chadha said that her intention was not just to “regurgitate” the film on to the stage but to grapple with the themes it dealt with – “inclusiveness and the very human warmth about who we are as a nation”. | Chadha said that her intention was not just to “regurgitate” the film on to the stage but to grapple with the themes it dealt with – “inclusiveness and the very human warmth about who we are as a nation”. |
| Speaking to the Guardian as she watched her son play football, she also recalled an experience following one of the film’s original pre-screenings at a cinema in Manchester, a year after the Oldham race riots. | Speaking to the Guardian as she watched her son play football, she also recalled an experience following one of the film’s original pre-screenings at a cinema in Manchester, a year after the Oldham race riots. |
| “I thought there was going to be a lot of Indians but actually there was a lot of English people and it was so packed they had to open two screens. A woman came up to me after – she was about 30, blond and I remember she was wearing white trousers, a white blouse and stilettoes and had been crying – and she said to me, ‘My God, you don’t know what you have done do you?’ She said, ‘After what has been gong on around here,’ referring to the Oldham riots, ‘what you showed us was that everyone wants the best for their kids. It doesn’t matter who you are’. And that was what the movie meant to her.” | “I thought there was going to be a lot of Indians but actually there was a lot of English people and it was so packed they had to open two screens. A woman came up to me after – she was about 30, blond and I remember she was wearing white trousers, a white blouse and stilettoes and had been crying – and she said to me, ‘My God, you don’t know what you have done do you?’ She said, ‘After what has been gong on around here,’ referring to the Oldham riots, ‘what you showed us was that everyone wants the best for their kids. It doesn’t matter who you are’. And that was what the movie meant to her.” |
| She believes that the arrival of the musical could spark something of a revolution in the West End’s largely white, middle-class audience. | She believes that the arrival of the musical could spark something of a revolution in the West End’s largely white, middle-class audience. |
| “I think the Phoenix Theatre is going to be overrun by Asians and everyone is going to go, ‘What the hell? Where was this audience?’” she laughed. | “I think the Phoenix Theatre is going to be overrun by Asians and everyone is going to go, ‘What the hell? Where was this audience?’” she laughed. |
| “But having said that I do think that we wanted to create a British musical that was completely different to anything that has come before. Our intention was to create a new kind of musical with a different musical language. Bollywood is banned. That word is not allowed because whatever Asian influences are there are basically Punjabi west London as far as I am concerned – those that I have grown up with and very west end musical influences. | |
| “The intention is to still to create a British musical, but it’s just that as soon as you have people on stage that look like those people who you normally don’t see then those people will come and take ownership of it, along with the regular theatre-going audience.” | “The intention is to still to create a British musical, but it’s just that as soon as you have people on stage that look like those people who you normally don’t see then those people will come and take ownership of it, along with the regular theatre-going audience.” |