Bollywood legends explain why you should experience the magic of Come Fall in Love

Have you heard about Come Fall In Love? It's a new musical featuring fantastic songs by Bollywood music directors Vishal Dadlani and Shekhar Ravjiani, and it's coming to the Manchester Opera House.
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Two of the most successful composers in the history of Bollywood music, Vishal Dadlani and Shekhar Ravjiani, are bringing their musical talents to the Manchester Opera House stage.

Their songs have been streamed over three billion times, and they’re well known for their film soundtracks, all 350 of them, and they even have over 70 number 1s to their name.

They’ve now written 18 songs in English for the brand new musical Come Fall In Love, based on the beloved Indian film DDLJ.

The duo spoke to I Love Manchester about their writing process and how writing music for theatre has changed their perspective on life.

Come Fall In Love
The Come Fall in Love cast rocking it at rehearsals

When you were first asked to create a DDLJ musical and turn it into Come Fall In Love, how did that feel? Was it almost too precious to touch?

Vishal: No, you can’t touch it. Look, so, DDLJ, the movie, is a cultural standpoint, it’s a benchmark in India. It literally moved the needle on how romance is expressed in the culture of India. It’s not just a film. It’s literally an emotion. So you can’t touch it. But it’s a story that we do want to share with the world.  This is not DDLJ. This is Come Fall In Love. This is an adaptation of DDLJ.  In a film, you have six songs that decorate the story. In a musical, the songs are the story. I mean, every conversation is sung, every expression is expressed musically. 

So it’s quite a different beast from the movie. So what we’ve done is we’ve tried to keep alive the nostalgia. The connection that South Asia has with DDLJ, but also, we want to talk to people who come in and have never seen the film.  When you watch it, when you hear it, when you feel it, you know, it should be something you take home as well. So we want to give everyone that experience. The DDLJ experience and the Come Fall In Love experience.  There are 18 brand new songs in English, you know, it’s a challenge, no question. It’s a challenge. But it’s a challenge we’ve enjoyed. 

Shekhar: It’s also Nell Benjamin’s vision of what DDLJ is and what the emotion and meeting of two cultures and the universal language of love. I think that’s the most important thing. The whole cast and crew, everyone’s from the UK and America and India and from London. And it’s beautiful to see the whole cast and crew come together for this, you know what I’m saying?

It’s been a beautiful experience because when we are writing a song for in a film, we’ve done about 600 songs now. We’ve done more than 75 films together now. We mix a song, we master a song, and you have to let it go, because they go and you shoot and it’s gone to a film and it’s gone.  And here you see a song live every single day. You never have to let it go.  It stays with you, but can change it any time you want. You can change it.

You can kind of make changes, you can add lines, you can kind of really decorate it beautifully. You can have, you know, everyone in the room becomes a part of it, it’s Nell, Rob Ashford, Aditya Chopra, Vishal and I, one of us, the actor or the middle supervisor, the director, everyone becomes a part of this thing. It’s such a beautiful process of letting a song kind of breathe, and it’s breathing, and it’s breathing and it’s breathing and grows. It’s growing.

How have the songs evolved and changed throughout the writing process to what the audience will see and hear on opening night?

Vishal: All of them have changed a little bit. But what’s really magical is, for me, this is personal. The moment of theatre magic when I think, that’s when Shekhar and I were like, oh man, this art form is so beautiful. It’s the opening of act two. 

Because we have a song there that was created just from a discussion that we were having in San Diego. “Wow, there should be a song here that says this.” And the next day we had that song. And then we taught everyone the song. And there it was. Well, it’s never worked like that for us until now. And then we had everyone sing it, the ensemble sang and people were in tears and it was so beautiful. I think that’s when we were really converted in the sense of like, this is amazing. 

Shekhar: It’s taught us patience. It taught us patience and to kind of enjoy, live every single song, to relax into the songs.  Exactly. 

And then there are more people, there are more heads, there are more hearts coming into it. You are kind of really seeing it all at that point.  It’s not just yours, you know. 

There’s a certain ownership that we take of our from the studio where it’s all ours and we do everything and we put it out and that’s it. You know, but here it belongs to all of us. Everywhere in the ensemble, everyone in the crew, all of us, we’re all part of it and hopefully, I think it’ll belong to the audience too. They’ll all take it with them. 

Some creatives get very protective of their work but you seem very generous with your work and want as many people to collaborate as possible. Why?

Shekhar: Well, I want to let my baby get love from everybody? Yeah. We’re all saying it takes a village to raise a baby. It takes all of you to create this incredible show. It’s still our baby. We still love this one. But for whatever it’s worth, all of us are one family together. And in India, we join families there. We’re all brought up like that. The audience that you’re going to be playing to are in the same state.

How do you change the show and make it your own without rocking the boat and changing it too much?

Vishal: You do what’s right, what you feel right. You do whatever your heart is saying or whatever these script demands. You, also at the same time, there’s one universal language, so we all feel the same.

You’re going to use the L word again aren’t you? The whole cast has said the main thing they want people to take away from the show is all the love!

Shekhar: Everyone’s not just saying it. We’re all feeling it every single day. The power of love, the power of bringing two people together, the two cultures together. It’s just unreal every day, the kind of feeling we’ve been getting here in this place. I think also that’s the love that people are putting into it. Yeah. You know, yesterday, we spent about half an hour or 45 minutes maybe on our lunch break, just individually thanking each person who’s out there doing this with us because we see how much they’re putting into it. 

We see how moved they are by the story, by the music, by the cultural aspect of it. And they’re all giving their hearts to us, for the duration and we’re very grateful for that. We really are. So we’re hoping that the audience will recognise that. I certainly hope so. 

Are the cast and crew as committed to the show as you are?

Vishal: You can tell that, with all these people. I say they’re living and breathing this. An audience will definitely feel the warmth. 

Shekhar: The audience will definitely feel that love. They will definitely feel. They will see the colours of India, they will see the colours of, you know, loving each other.  They will see the harmonies. They’ll get the sense of community together. You know what I’m saying? 

Have you surprised yourselves with what you’ve produced?

Vishal: I think the music has surprised us. More than us surprising ourselves, the way that it has evolved, the way that the story is coming through, the energy of it. I mean, it would it would be. We’d be remiss to say that we did it. 

Shekhar: We made the songs, yes, but they’ve come to life with the choreography. They’ve come to life and being delivered by the singers. And that’s really been suddenly you’re seeing it because sometimes a singer will express your song very differently from the way you may have sung it while creating it in the studio. It brings a whole new element like “oh, okay, it could be said like that!” so that’s surprising. 

And then the choreography and like holi hai, when we did it, we have we have a history of Holi songs in India. Many of those we’ve created, many of those we’ve sung and they, you know, they’re acknowledged as being well known, you know, they play at every Holi. But this one, there’s a message, and it’s not a preaching message. 

It’s a ‘come join us’ message, you know, which is really ‘Celebrate with us’ Yeah, exactly. It’s a celebration. which we need to do, don’t we? We really do. Not just today. All of us. More than ever, we have to.

What do you think is your favourite song that you’ve written in the show?

Vishal: So, you know, honestly, it changes every day. It depends on which one I just saw. You know, because suddenly that’s my favourite. But we have this little reprise of a love song, which has everything that we’ve just spoken about.  It’s got love. It’s got a new melody and it’s got the film in it as well, and that’s what’s going to have people screaming. So when I saw that yesterday, I mean, this is a merge. So for me, that’s one of my favourites.

Shekhar: My song is a is a one of my favourite songs in that entire musical, which is Lajjo  Simrans mum sings to her daughter. Lajjo sings a song. That will, you know, the thing is it’s beautiful, the relationship between mother and daughter. It’s a very special relationship. I have a daughter and I know her relationship with her mother. And I know how they feel for each other and how they kind of the mother just wants to make the daughter as strong as possible. Your mother does everything, forgets about her own life, selfless, really. It’s just completely selfless and just wants to do everything and you know, help her, guide her. 

You’re both really feeling the love and emotions coming from this show aren’t you?

Vishal: Look, I’m a rock and roller. Hardcore rock and roller. But I think this show has really converted me to understanding, like you know, musicals tend to give you big emotions. But so does life, right? And that’s the reality of it. And that’s the beauty of it. It’s the ebb and flow. It’s the peaks in the drops and it’s so much happening all at the time. Seeing this process, I feel life is a musical. Really, really. 

How has been the process of writing all of these songs been? What influenced the music in the show?

Shekhar: There’s some rock and roll. It’s a wide variety of genres styles, and music which Vishal and I have enjoyed. 

Vishal: You know, there’s a lot of this beautiful sprinkle of Indian flavour and a sprinkle of the Modern. There’s modern music. There is musical theatre music. A flavour of orchestral music, the flavour of the instruments. I think that’s what we really bring from Bollywood. Yeah, the Indian film music is not a pastiche so much as it is a very inclusive form of music. It always has been.  We try different styles from around the world. We experiment with lots of of different stuff. And I think all of that carries through here.  But what we’ve done here is we also have a very strong core of Indianness to the music. So I really hope, I can’t wait for you guys to hear the fun songs.

Tickets to see Come Fall In Love

Come Fall in Love is on at Manchester Opera House from Thursday 29th of May to Saturday 21st June 2025.

You can get tickets by clicking here

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