When Bridget Jones met Bollywood

A young woman in a traditional wedding sari sits sobbing. Next to her, a mobile phone trills insistently. Evoking the ancient and modern, this opening image sums up the dilemma of our heroine, Chumpa, caught between the pressures of Indian culture and her desire for the sort of freedom her white counterparts enjoy.

There's nothing terribly new in the plight of second-generation, ethnic-minority youth and their thwarted ambitions but Dolly Dhingra's engaging, if not hugely demanding, comedy gives it all a Bridget Jones spin.

From its candy-pink poster with canary yellow lettering, this screams chick-lit (and VG it is, too) as 28-year-old wannabe journo Chumpa, under pressure from her widowed mother, goes in search of a husband. And she doesn't want an "MFI" (Man From India).

Dumping boyfriend Ashok, a shaven-headed, two-timing wide boy, she trawls through the nerds and ne'er-do-wells thrown up by dating agencies and lonelyhearts ads until she lands Vinod, a Bollywood actor (Alex Caan, all pretension, glossy, flick-backed hair and medallion). In Bridget Jones-style, though, another prospective match lurks modestly on the sidelines.

Dhingra certainly succeeds in presenting a more contemporary image of young Indian women forging a path in a male-dominated culture, though you feel that her men are often two-dimensional slimeballs (Ashok's money-grabbing father, for example) or, at best, three-dimensional slimeballs compared with her women.

With its one-liner observations about Indian mores and the sketch-like nature of the piece, this is more Goodness Gracious Me than East is East - but it's cheerfully done with dance numbers from Bollywood to salsa via Missy Elliott's Get Ur Freak On, and the cast clearly enjoys the parade of secondary characters, among them the man at the dating agency who produces a Dulux chart to test applicants' skin tone and the very Anglo-Indian suitor whose mobile ring tone is Rule Britannia. Furthermore, Manjinder Virk's Chumpa keeps the audience hooked with a winning combination of stroppiness and vulnerability. Kully Thiarai's production for the Pilot Theatre Company, on Keith Khan's minimalist set of stainless-steel locker doors and neon, is fluidly played and is certainly timely in this summer of Asian-themed entertainment (Bombay Dreams, Bend it Like Bekham). So, as Bridget Jones meets Bollywood, does Chumpa go for the cad or Mr Nice Guy? What do you think, yah?

Unsuitable Girls