Match fit and ready to bend it like Becks
GOAL! Natalie Dew does a bit of fancy footwork and bangs the ball home.
For several months, she and fellow lead Lauren Samuels have been attending a football boot camp to learn the basic skills of soccer.
For Natalie, it’s more than just kicking the ball. She needs to know how to bend it, because she plays Jess, star of Bend It Like Beckham: The Musical.
‘A lot of it is to do with looking confident with the ball,’ she told me, laughing. She explained that she had to act as if the ball wasn’t some foreign object to Jess, the West London schoolgirl whose Sikh parents do not want her to play for the local girls’ football team. The show is based on Gurinder Chadha’s 2002 movie, the title of which has become part of the national conversation. Natalie said she had little interest in football before, apart from her, hmmm, obsession with Michael Owen, the former Liverpool player. ‘I know,’ she said, blushing. ‘I’m hoping Beckham — if he comes to the show — will introduce me to Michael.’ She told me she can kick confidently with her right foot, which is fine since she believes only wimps kick with their left. But can she bend it like Beckham, I ask? ‘I can curve it, but not lift it yet,’ she says. A year ‘ ago I couldn’t kick it at all, so there has been improvement.’ She has certainly developed a passion for the game and a fondness for the back pages of newspapers. ‘I have to learn this whole atmosphere and passion thing that comes with it, like learning a language,’ she said, as Chadha, who’s also directing the stage version, discussed a scene with Aletta Collins, the choreographer, and Sonia Friedman, the producer. Behind us, composer Howard Goodall was huddled with lyricist Charles Hart, trying to decide whether a number in act two needs to be merely revised or re-written from top to bottom. During a scene involving Natalie, Lauren (who plays Jess’s best mate, Jules) and Jamie Campbell Bower — who plays Joe, manager of the girls’ team whom both young women have the hots for — they tried out some new dance steps. Collins watched, changed a few moves and they did it again. The score is a mix of Western music, traditional and country Punjabi tunes, blended together by Goodall, who has a gift for coming up with a melody that sticks.
THETEAM tried out a new song with powerhouse singer Sophie- Louise Dann, playing Jules’s mum Paula (the role taken by Juliet Stevenson in the film). Chadha chided me when I mentioned the B-word: Bollywood. ‘Bollywood is a banned word in this rehearsal room!’ she barked. ‘This is very West London specific. The backdrop is a wedding in West London and a football team. We take traditional Punjabi folk music and Punjabi wedding music, modernise it, give it a West London flavour. Howard and Charles have studied the culture and made it their own. ‘The songs take you deeper into the world of women and sport, and of being from a West London Punjabi family.’ Gurinder said she wanted to pay homage to her mum and aunties, many of whom worked in factories such as Wall’s and Quaker Oats (‘we called it the porridge factory’). So she gave Hart a script covered with notes about her family, and he came back with lyrics that reflected her childhood. One song has Jess’s father reflecting on how he measured success: a concrete drive and lamb every day. ‘The song Look At Us Now isn’t morose,’ she said. ‘It’s more what was your coda for success, and for my dad it was the fact that he could have lamb every day, not just at weekends — and rows and rows of bottles of Chivas Regal in his bar.’ Previews begin at the Phoenix Theatre on May 15, with an official opening night on June 24.