Preview: Bollywood Jane, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds

Bringing a Bollywood spectacle to the stage has been far from simple. Aside from directing a 20-strong community chorus in this new production of Bollywood Jane at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, the director Nikolai Foster has had to navigate a theatrical landscape that jumps from gritty social realism to Bollywood fantasy sequences.

"One minute you're watching quite a naturalistic scene," says Foster, "and then suddenly, without any apology or explanation, you're off, from a street in Bradford to a field in India or to a Swiss Alpine mountain. I think we've found a really interesting solution that will create quite a dazzling stage picture."

Amanda Whittington's play tells the story of Jane, played by Nichola Burley, last seen in the BBC film Born Equal with Colin Firth. Jane is a disenchanted teenager who finds in Bollywood cinema a glittering alternative to her humdrum life. "It's been an exhilarating experience," says Foster. "I've completely fallen in love with it and become a bit of a Bollywood junkie. For me, it's the fact that the stories have an emphasis on morality and tradition; the characters are forced to make a moral decision. It's nice to be reminded of something that's quite simple in its understanding of the way humanity and the world works."

Yorkshire also hosts the International Indian Film Awards (IIFA) next month, and Bollywood Jane is part of the Fringe Festival for this international event, which is hoping to attract more than 28,000 visitors to Leeds. Foster is hoping that some of his new-found celluloid heroes will pay a visit to the Playhouse. But will they be won over by Bollywood's leap from the big screen to the stage?

Foster is convinced: "I think it will make that transition, for the simple reason that it doesn't matter how good my staging is or whether we get it looking right, the minute you hear those songs, they're immediately intoxicating. Quite frankly, you could go to Leeds bus station, put it on and people would go for it."

2 to 30 June (0113-213 7700)