Hadley Fraser with Gayatri Iyer in action onstage

Molly Kaye, author of The Far Pavilions, died in January last year, aged 95, without being able to see her novel reborn on stage as a musical. But had she lived to see her ambition being realised, she would probably have been delighted with the result. Compressing a novel of 958 pages into two and a half hours of song and dance means cutting out big chunks of the story, dispensing with the complex matrix of characters across generations and inventing a few new ones but M.M. Kaye would have recognised the musical as assuredly based on her creation.

Among the Indian cast members, Gayatri Iyer, Kabir Bedi and Sophiya Haque have all contributed in large measure in helping to turn this musical into a West End spectacular. As Princess Anjuli, the heroine, Gayatri, a talented Bollywood playback singer with also a beautiful face, manages to hit the high notes as only a trained Indian classical singer can ? her opening song, Dream of me tonight, is a catchy number. Kabir, as Koda Dad Khan Saheb, Master of Horses to the Maharajah of Gulkote, has a commanding presence on stage. And as the evil Janoo Rani, Sophiya Haque, oozes poison and sex in an exotic cocktail.

In Bombay Dreams, Sophiya took over from Ayesha Dharker as Rani and got wet nightly under a fountain. This time, ?I have a great entrance and exit,? she says. Her entrance is as a courtesan who seduces her way into the bed of the Maharajah of Gulkote, goes on to bear him a male heir and then promptly murders him so she can rule with her real lover, the neighbouring Rana of Bhitor, who had initially sent her as a ?gift? to the susceptible Maharajah. She reveals her long legs through the folds of her red sari in her very first dance. ?I am getting into the skin of it,? she grins. ?That is going out on a limb because no courtesan would have dressed like that. But this is fantasy.?

Her exit is on a funeral pyre when she commits suttee after the dying Rana, spotting the younger Anjuli, dumps Janoo Rani for a prettier girl. Asked to represent Eastern sexual allure, Sophiya ? and Gayatri ? deploy the Indian belly button as a weapon of mass destruction.

?The one thing I was asked to be was very still which I was finding a struggle at the beginning because I am used to moving,? reveals the former MTV presenter. Now that Bombay Dreams is gone, The Far Pavilions brings a much needed Indian touch to the West End though this is essentially a British musical. To be sure, there are Indian costumes ? stunning gold and blue silk at one point ? and Indian music from Kuljit Bhamra. The sets as well as the scarlet tunics of the British officers will take Brits back to the time of the Raj.

This is a very enjoyable musical in which ?two worlds collide?, but in the end, the English conquerors are conquered by India, as has happened so often in Indian history. The energy of the Bhangra dancing contrasts with the stiffness of the regimental Ball.

Behind me I heard a group of Indian women snigger when the Indian soldiers sing a ribald number about how it takes all night to unwrap memsahibs trussed up in their corsets. Having read every word of the long novel and having seen the ?4 million musical twice in rapid succession at the 1,300-seat Shaftesbury Theatre in London, it seems to me that the producer, Michael Ward, the Australian-born director, Gayle Edwards, and Stephen Clark, who has done the adaptation and the lyrics, have managed to retain the spirit of M.M. Kaye?s story. I reckon the novel would make a great Bollywood film, and that might yet come to pass for Javed Akhtar has had a chat with Ward about doing a possible Hindi version.

Kaye, who was born and brought up in India, took 15 years to write her novel, setting it in the 25-year period between the 1857 Uprising and the start of the second Afghan war. The novel has been a bestseller since it came out in 1978 and its scarcity in bookshops in India at the moment suggests there may have been a run on copies.

Kabir Bedi in The Far Pavilions

Kulvinder Ghir and Sophiya Haque

At the heart of the musical is a question of identity. Brought up as a servant boy, Ashok is told by his mother, Sita, just before she dies, that she isn?t really his mother but someone who had brought him up when his real parents died.

Poor Ashok cannot read the writing on a document she hands him. ?The words are as English as you are,? she tells him, in one of the most heartrending moments in the musical. Traumatised to discover that he is Ashton Pelham-Martyn, the little boy ? Ash ? is packed off to be ?flattened on a rugger pitch? at public school in England and returns to India as an English army officer.

There are children to play the roles of the young Ashok and Anjuli but the older ones are often on stage at the same time, which is a clever trick which gives the production fluidity. As the musical unwinds and we are confronted with Ash?s contrasting love for his English fiancee, Belinda, and Princess Anjuli, who was his best friend when he was Ashok, the servant boy, we begin to understand that Ash?s heart has always remained Hindustani. Ashton Pelham-Martyn, played by Hadley Fraser, and Gayatri make a handsome pair.

They make love in a cave when they are caught out in a dust-storm. Anyone who has read the novel will know this part is accurate ? in fact, Kaye allowed Ash to make repeated love to Anjuli on their first night together. In the love scenes and the kissy kissy bits, however, Gayatri comes across to me as a shy and inhibited Indian college girl on her first date.

?Well, that is what she is,? insists Gayatri. ?At the end of the day she is still a princess who has been brought up in the women?s quarters without seeing anyone and she has dreamt of this one man all her life.?

Gayatri?s husband, the award-winning singer, Kunal Ganjanwala, who is based in Mumbai but has come over to see several of the performances, was the one who encouraged his wife to take on the role. ?Not too many men would like to see their wife make love to another man on stage every night,? Ward points out. ?But he said, ?I want to see my wife fly.? ?

It so happens I saw Gayatri in the ensemble of Alyqye Padamsee?s Final Solutions at the Air Force stadium in Delhi eight years ago when she was 16. That was about the only acting she had previously done when she was plucked out for the lead role in The Far Pavilions.

?The first three weeks were very hard in the rehearsal studios because in order to do what you have to do, one has to shed inhibitions,? she explains. ?One has to allow oneself to be vulnerable and exposed and it is not very easy to do that. But the minute you can walk that road then it becomes easier to do.?

For her, singing was not the difficult part. Acting was. ?I am a trained Indian classical singer so that has been my big strength for this project. The tougher challenge was not just singing but to be able to act through the piece. Communicating in a musical is so different from being the singer behind the mike because you actually have to tell a story. It is very, very different (from the cinema scene in India) because in India in any recording format you sing a song but on stage, especially in musical theatre, you don?t just sing a song, you act the song,? adds Gayatri, who has done playback for Insaaf, Loafer, Muqadar, Bhoot, Dhoom, Rudraksh, Kisna, Page 3, Naach, Sandhya, Elaan and, of course, Bride & Prejudice.

She misses Bollywood and her family and friends but has hit big time in the London West End. ?It has been a huge journey in these two and a half months for someone who has not done much acting before to being right in the deep end of things.? What I like about the musical is that although the British officers, fine and dandy in their smart red coats, are shown as arrogant and overconfident in their belief they have a mission to civilise India, they are ultimately not caricatured. Belinda makes the transition from Ash?s blonde but light-headed fiancee to the deeper and kinder woman who understands, too late, that she has lost the man she really loves. To accept Ash is to accept India.

Noteworthy Rivals

The Far Pavilions will compete with several successful musicals, some long established, in London’s West End. Like:

• Chicago: Boasts girls with the longest legs in town; ‘Jazz age’ sex and murder in jail • Chitty chitty bang bang: Stage production of famous film in which car is airborne — onstage • Fame: Manhattan spectacular • Les miserables: Now in 19th year, based on Victor Hugo classic • The lion king: Journey from Disney’s African jungle • Mamma Mia!: Knits together Abba’s greatest hits • Mary Poppins: Based on old musical film but spiced up • The phantom of the opera: Most successful Lloyd Webber musical based on mysterious goings-on in Paris opera house; includes catchy tunes • The producers: Produced by Mel Brooks, parodies Nazis • Saturday night fever: Based on classical disco movie • We will rock you: Based on the songs of the band, Queen • The woman in white: Michael Ball stars in musical based on Wilkie Collins novel

As Sanjay Leela Bhansali did in getting Paro and Chandramukhi to meet in his Devdas (though there was no such encounter in Sarat Chandra Chatterji?s novel), so also Belinda and Gayatri come face to face in the musical (this is not in Kaye?s book either). The innovation works well.

Dianne Pilkington, the English actress who plays Belinda, says of the scene: ?It is such a nice thing to do ? have the two worlds meet. The two women are basically representative of Ash?s two sides in the struggle that he has.? In the musical, the British officers prepare to march on Kabul to prevent the Afghan capital falling into the hands of the Russians who, they believe, are threatening their Indian interests. In many respects, given the presence of British troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, not much has changed.

Will British audiences warm to a musical which questions the notion that while the Empire might have had its shortcomings, it was ultimately a force for good ? a view that today even Labour politicians such as Gordon Brown and David Blunkett are trying to promote?

The musical?s villain and Ash?s principal tormentor is Captain Harkness (David Burt), who is determined to punish erring Indians. ?We are the fathers of India,? he sings. ?We will civilise the people.? The officers, meanwhile, sing heroically of Afghanistan, ?a land rich with English blood?.

?We are looking back at our history and identifying some quite atrocious things that have happened on both sides and that is covered in the musical,? Pilkington, who has done several musicals, points out. ?It is interesting for British people to look at what we did way back in history and find some interesting parallels with some things happening now; the blinkered belief that you are right that has happened all the way through history, not just in Britain but in every country. That is sensitively handled in the musical.?

Her Belinda is utterly believable, as is Kabir?s Koda Dad Khan Sahib who is almost a father to the young Ashok and saves the life of the grown up Ash in the final battle for Kabul. Kabir should have played the same role in the TV mini-series of Kaye?s novel, made in 1983, but Octopussy, his Bond movie, overshot and the part was given to Omar Sharif.

Bedi?s stage appearance is a powerful argument for ensuring that in India, too, there is greater cross-fertilisation between the theatre and cinema, as there is in Britain. ?The joy of treading the boards in theatre is unequalled for an actor,? says Kabir. ?You come back to the fundamentals of performance: the importance of each word, the underlying emotion, the timing of things. Sometimes people in cinema forget that. There is a craft to theatre acting that is, according to me, the root of acting. Surely, it?s going back to basics.?

He adds: ?The last time I was on the stage was 14 years ago when I played Othello and Nikki was my Desdemona and I met and married her ? so I have decided to stay away from other cast members this time!?

Kabir is committed to The Far Pavilions until, at least, September. ?There are people among the traditional British audience that are a little taken aback by the pro-Asian stance of the this play but that is a reason for the British Asian community to rally and say, ?We want more of this.? And the sooner they do it the better.?

He thinks that Indians everywhere ?should make it a point of supporting it now because it is very hard to find great Asian stories on the British stage and pro-Asian stories at that?.

By the end of the musical, Ash is reconciled to his personal dilemma: ?Who am I?? He is a dashing Englishman within whom beats a romantic Indian heat.