A Night at the Bombay Roxy

The very clever and extremely talented guys from Swamp had scoured all of London (and beyond) for the best and most talented individuals to bring to life our one-off immersive theatre production Night at the Bombay Roxy.

After many applications, headshots, lines delivered, improvisations improvised and songs belted out, we found our full cast and crew!

Without further ado, introducing… Cyrus, Ursula and the Bombay Roxy team.

The lead roles were performed by Vikash Bhai, who played the role of Cyrus, and Sophie Khan Levy who played Ursula. They were joined by Raj Aich as Romesh, Seema Bowri as Farah, Manish Gandhi as Rudy and Harmage Singh Kalirai, who played the role of the Inspector.

The live jazz band featured Laurence Garrat on double bass, Miguel Gorodi on trumpet, Leon Greening on piano, Dave Ingamells on drums and Helena Kay on saxophone and clarinet.

This talented ensemble of actors and musicians transported our diners-turned-audience members to the opening night of the Bombay Roxy, a café and jazz club housed within a former Art Deco cinema set in Bombay, 1949. The performance was matched with welcome cocktails and a lavish dining experience of our best Bombay dishes as the performance unfolded.

Night at the Bombay Roxy was a rich, immersive, Indian noir. We worked with Swamp Studios, an innovative theatre company, led by Ollie Jones and Clem Garritty (from the award-winning theatre collective Kill the Beast). Directed by Eduard Lewis, Associate Director of Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax (The Old Vic, 2015), the rest of the creative team included composer Dom Jones, movement director Sara Green, lighting designer Christopher Nairne and sound designer, David Gregory.

The show immersed the audience in the intriguing world of 1940s Bombay, where an unexpected and exciting jazz scene was flourishing alongside a uniquely Bombay version of the Art Deco style (the city remains the biggest and best example of Art Deco architecture in the world, after Miami). Whilst Bombay’s architects and designers studied Western Art Deco, they redefined it by creating a distinctive Indian style. Jazz was first introduced to Bombay in the 1930s by touring American artists who opened the city’s ears to new sounds. Local musicians were quick to catch on, and by the 1940s ‘hot jazz’ was everywhere. This was Bombay’s glamorous jazz age, as told in Bombay-based author (and our dear friends) Naresh Fernandes’ critically acclaimed book, Taj Mahal Foxtrot – the inspiration for this play.

The production played out in the beautiful surroundings of Dishoom Kensington from 27th November until 14th December in the year of 2017.