But the dialogue can be stiff and unconvincing:  “Men are all the same.” “There is a lack of democracy. The system is in need of reform.” “Why do men wander?” “Death comes to us all.” “No hand can catch time.” “We like curry.” “In time for the Queen’s Jubbly.” “We know they’re no better than us.” “Englishmen are a little old-fashioned.” “So much for BRITISH FAIR PLAY!”

When, after many years apart Rani Das and Hari are re-united we might expect a little more warmth. Perhaps he quietly says,“I always knew I was meant to be there with you.” She replies, “Don’t ever leave me again.” But she knows Hari spent three of those years not far away in London ‘working to improve himself to be worthy of her’, she might be wise to be cautious. At least she appears to believe him.

At one point their Cockney friend Lascar Sally (Nicola Stephenson) says, “I love a bit of Brown.” Sally and other members of the ‘lower orders’ seem to accept and even protect the immigrants. It is the cold-fish British aristocratic who is aroused but callous. And the racist aristocracy scheming and pressurise their own monarch to abandon Abdul Karim. But since he may have “woke” her to the evils of war, racialism, and British Imperialism this may simply be self-protection rather than bigotry. Whatever the truth there is still a huge gap between the fictional Rani Das’s tale and the historic Abdul Karim’s which leaves a huge area of Indian presence and impact in the UK unexamined.

The closing scenes have an elegiac quality since we, mostly, don’t know what will happen to these people. But Queen Victoria does get her Indian apotheosis in a virtuoso finale of dance and music, where Rani Das (Tanya Katyal) and the rest of the hard-working, diamond-precision, cast show just what they can do.