Six more months for Bollywood musical

Bombay Dreams has extended its run by six months to cope with audience demand.

Andrew Lloyd Webber's Bollywood musical has played to packed houses at London's Apollo Victoria theatre since it opened last month.

Tickets for the new booking period covering October 1 to March 2003 will go on sale from Wednesday.

Lloyd Webber said he was delighted with the show's success and credited it with changing the face of West End audiences.

"I am absolutely thrilled. It is quite extraordinary that this musical has come from zero to being sold out," he said.

"We were nervous about how the show would be received because we knew we had something very different.

"But it seems to have absolutely captured the imaginations of people who don't normally go to musicals. The audience is different from any I have seen for a long time.

"We wanted to make people feel that musicals are hip and cool again. Musicals were losing a younger audience and I think we have gone some way to reversing that."

British Asians have loved the production but it has also attracted a large white audience, Lloyd Webber said: "There is a considerable Asian presence but there is also a white audience, who are often friends of the young Asians who come to see it.

"The cast are young and I don't think they know what's hit them. Raza (Jaffrey who plays Akaash) is getting mobbed by young girls outside the theatre every night," he said.