Edinburgh’s old Freemason’s Hall has seen nothing like this. In a final rush of colour, Ticket to Bollywood, the most joyous show on the Fringe, has reached its pulsating finale.
Twelve performers leap into the auditorium, urging the audience to their feet. The punters, grinning from ear-to-ear, hardly need the invitation. Even the white-haired ladies of Morningside are throwing away their sticks to dance.
It’s the wonderful end to a beautifully confected and choreographed show, produced by one of the most successful performing arts companies in India. It is not deep or meaningful, but like the Bollywood it affects to encapsulate, it offers an hour of light entertainment.
If the vivid colours and action of Ticket to Bollywood are spectacle enough for most audiences, Shubhra Bhardwaj, the show’s owner, has a story of her own.
The 41-year-old creative director has emerged as one of India’s most talked-about entrepreneurs — a mother of two teenage boys who has defied the odds to rise to the top.
Advertisement
Six years ago she walked away from a failing marriage and a successful family business in the arts to establish Ferriswheel, a one-woman company that has grown at an astonishing speed. She now employs 300 people.
“My husband and I didn’t part amicably,” she said. “Even though I had built the [family] company, I did not have access to it.
“I am non-confrontational. I did not want to have friction. My children were younger and I did not have a choice. I did not want to become cynical or play the victim so I took charge and set up Ferriswheel. By then I was very clear that I would not be intimidated, and I knew I was good at what I do.
“There was a level of pain, because I was very attached to what I had already built, but today I am free and very happy. My kids are extremely supportive. They love me and they verbalise their respect, they stand up for what I stood up for.”
Any of her staff can take ten days’ paid leave to visit a Vipassana meditation centre because, in 2009, the practice had given Bhardwaj “the jet fuel” to change her life.
Advertisement
Vipassana demands adherence to a tough, ten-day regime, without speech or eye contact. By the fourth day she says, giggling, she was “like a weapon of mass destruction” and wanted to quit. She endured and found relief as she “shed the package” she was carrying.
On her own, her instinct for business blossomed. In her previous life she says she was denied access to the company accounts and had no experience with money. At Ferriswheel, as she pitched and won business, she would approach her accountant for “pocket money”, unable at first to comprehend that the money she earned was truly her own.
Bhardwaj is not religious but is, she says, very spiritual; a friend to her staff, not a dictator. The apparent affection of her production crew as they mill about the venue suggests a healthy regard for her approach. “I am very clear,” she says. “I believe in moving as a team. I know I am the most powerful person in the room at any given time. If I need to change the tone, people will toe the line. But that is not the life I want.
“It is never about putting people down. I don’t enjoy that.”
The company has assembled an impressive CV in short space of time. It delivered the opening ceremony at the Delhi Commonwealth Games in 2010, operates a number of theme parks and is expanding into Dubai.
Advertisement
As for Ticket to Bollywood, it remains one of Bhardwaj’s most successful ventures. Commissioned for the Indian pavilion at the 2010 World Expo in China, it earned a standing ovation from 8,000 people and made the front page of the Shanghai Daily.
It’s not like that on the Fringe. The show is housed on a stage too small to fit the dancers and the filmed backdrop is played on a screen that occasionally flutters in the draught. More problematic, the theatre is at the wrong end of town to guarantee a sell-out, though bums-on-seats is by no means the only objective, according to Bhardwaj.
“Nobody ever earned a profit from the Fringe,” she says. “Of course it’s about the show and the audience, but there are touring circuits to pick up here, Europe for six months, then the UK, America. Never go home again — that is the dream of every company.”
Should the offers of touring circuits never materialise, Bhardwaj will take the blame. She smiles again: “I’m a leader from the front, I will take the first bullet. My team know that, but they are like that too. I am afraid we are a massive, mushy, disgusting circle of love.” Not unlike the show.
Ticket to Bollywood, New Town Theatre, 9.30pm, until August 30.