The extensively retooled Broadway version of the London hit Bombay Dreams got a big boost with four Outer Critics Circle nominations, the first awards of the season.
The $14 million production with A R Rahman's music has been in previews for nearly three weeks and opens April 29.
The show set in Bollywood was nominated for the Best Musical trophy with such heavy contenders as Wicked (10 nominations), The Boy From Oz (5), and Caroline Or Change (3).
Bombay Dreams was also nominated in the Best Featured Actress in a Musical (Ayesha Dharker), Best Featured Actor (Sriram Ganesan), and Best Choreography (Anthony Van Laast and Farah Khan).
This is the first time ever that an Indian is nominated for a Broadway award. In recent years, actors like Aasif Mandvi (Oklahoma!) have been getting significant parts on Broadway, the most lucrative theatre district in the world, with annual earnings reaching $1 billion.
For Farah Khan, too, the nomination is an award. She is the first Indian ever to choreograph a Broadway show.
The 54th Annual Awards will be announced May 3 and presented at a ceremony at Sardi's Restaurant, May 27. Known as the first awards of the season, they are decided by an group of writers 'covering New York theatre for out-of-town newspapers, national publications and other media beyond Broadway.'
The awards are prestigious next only to Tonys which will be announced in about two weeks.
While Dharker, who plays a sizzling Bollywood actress determined to remain in business despite growing old, came to Broadway after an extensive London experience in the show, for Ganesan this is the first big exposure. He plays the eunuch Sweetie, the moral centre of the musical.
"Even in my wildest dreams would I have thought I would be playing anything at all on Broadway let alone this fabulous and complex character," he had said a few weeks ago in an interview with rediff.com. Discouraged by his parents from studying acting, he had been studying neuroscience at Temple University when he decided to go for a Bombay Dreams audition. He said even a few minutes of auditioning would have wiped out three years of frustration and humiliation in studying something that he abhorred.
Farah Khan is the first ever Indian to choreograph for a Broadway show. Anthony Van Laast, her collaborator on the musical presented by Andrew Lloyd Webber, is a Broadway and West End veteran, whose Mamma Mia! is playing almost opposite Broadway Theatre in New York.
They face competition from some of the biggest names on Broadway, including Wayne Cilento, (Wicked) and Kathleen Marshall (Wonderful Town), Joey McKneely, (The Boy From Oz). While Wicked and The Boy From Oz are certified hits, and Wonderful Town quite a success, the fourth nominee, the Jerry Mitchell-choreographed Never Gonna Dance was a bomb.
Bombay Dreams is marching towards the official opening with a modest $5 million advance.
"Awards and word of mouth publicity are paramount to a show like this that has no stars or well-known names," producer Elizabeth Williams had said. "The show is the star by itself but unless it gets a strong word of mouth and big nominations, it cannot be a hit."