Getting the look right was the most difficult thing,” says Viraf Sarkari, a founder-director of Wizcraft and the moving force behind Kingdom of Dreams. “Omung Kumar (the venue’s theme designer and art director) just took my vision to another level and realised it.” The vision was borne of a desire to create a desi space similar in sensory impact to the larger-than-life spaces associated with other cities, like Paris’ Moulin Rouge, or the boulevards of Las Vegas. Kingdom of Dreams certainly does achieve a spectacular visual effect: a space where the delicate curlicues of late-Mughal design match the stupendous scale of ancient Indian sculpture and masonry, while the open courtyards are reminiscent of the stately lines and clarity of some colonial architecture. The patina of shimmer over all these overlapping effects, though, is pure Bollywood: the musical headlining centrestage – in the vast Indo-Gothic Nautanki Mahal – when the centre opens later this summer is sure to emphasise this. The Bollywood aesthetic, of course, is all about magnifying grandeur. It’s exactly the effect the myriad ‘Indias’ on display at Kingdom of Dreams strives to achieve.

FIGURE-ATIVELY SPEAKING
Some numbers associated with Kingdom of Dreams

• 1500 : WORKMEN ONSITE AT PEAK TIME
• 5000 : METRES OF FABRIC USED
• 5000 : HOURS OF SHOW REHEARSALS
• 44 : PAGES OF FINALISED SCRIPT
• 100s : OF DESIGN BLUEPRINTS

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