Once upon a time two men sat in a New York bar lamenting the state of Broadway. So they decided to play Fantasy Musical. Several beers down they came up with a weird hybrid: a jukebox musical that injected the songs of Blondie into the plot of Desperately Seeking Susan. Somehow this botched centaur stumbled all the way to the West End, where it joined that throng of musicals that should have stayed on the drawing board.
Blinded by the Light is a Bollywood-style musical comedy set in the Pakistani community of Luton that takes as its soundtrack the oeuvre of Bruce Springsteen. No drunk blokes in a bar could ever have conjured up such an implausibility. And yet it is a trueish story, inspired by the memoir of Sarfraz Manzoor. Greetings from Bury Park (2007) told of a Muslim teenager growing up in Luton in the late 1980s. His life is hemmed in on one side by a despotic father and on the other by the National Front, while the M1 roars by. ‘Luton is a four-letter word,’ he scowls in a poem. His horizons expand at sixth-form college when a Sikh classmate introduces him to Born in the USA. Here Manzoor’s name has been changed to Javed Khan, and he’s played with charm and enthusiasm by Viveik Kalra.
There’s no doubting the sincerity of Manzoor’s discipleship. In Springsteen’s songs — about making the best of the cards you’ve been dealt in whatever shit town you happen to live — he finds a comforting gospel. ‘It’s like Bruce knows everything I’ve ever felt,’ Javed says ecstatically. It’s a harder task to prod and poke them into the mould of a feelgood coming-of-age film. As they swarm inside Javed’s head, the lyrics of ‘Dancing in the Dark’ and ‘The River’ jostle helpfully on to the screen.
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