Bombay Dreams, Apollo Victoria, London<br></br> Rose Rage, Haymarket Theatre Royal, London<br></br>The Shadow of a Boy, NT Loft, London<br></br>Who Goes There?, BAC, London

Alarming border disputes between India and Pakistan aren't stopping fusions of British and Asian culture from abounding in the UK and happily entering the mainstream. Take Gurinder Chadha's recent film Bend It Like Beckham, last month's Bollywood fest at Selfridges and now Bombay Dreams.

This new West End musical boasts a score by India's popular composer A R Rahman and a book by Meera Syal (of Goodness Gracious Me). It's been nurtured and produced by Andrew Lloyd Webber who clearly wants to move with the times as his old blockbusters finally run out of steam.

Sometimes Bombay Dreams is refreshingly different. However, I was left wishing it was more so, less Westernised, Lloyd Webberised and clichéd. In this rags-to-riches rom-com, which offers a lesson about not betraying your roots, Akaash is a good-looking lad who lives in a (sanitised) Bombay slum.

Helped by his selflessly adoring buddy, a cross-dressing eunuch called Sweetie, Akaash realises his dream of becoming a Bollywood star. Celebrity goes to his head, but in the end he heroically thwarts the mafia villains who try to demolish the slum, and gets the girl – his director, Priya.

Unfortunately, Syal's dialogue has too many feeble jokes and the plot developments feel formulaic and jerky. If that's tongue-in-cheek, alluding to B-rate Bollywood storylines, the satirical tone is fudged. Steven Pimlott's production tends to look bland on a grand scale too. The shanty town – a giant, junk-strewn pipe on a revolve – looks like the recycled set of Cats. Still, you get gorgeous saris, a gushing fountain, and a parade of pink elephant-gods.

The cast are all energised though one might wish Priya – played by rising star Preeya Kalidas with a lovely, liquid singing voice – finished up with Raj Ghatak's naturally charming Sweetie rather than Raza Jaffrey's strutting Akaash. I most enjoyed Farah Khan and Anthony Van Laast's choreography with traditional Indian dancing – sinuous arms, zigzagging heads and light stomps – blurring into funky body-popping.

At points Rahman's songs, more problematically, sound like tributes to Sir Andrew, but his Bollywood pop number, "Shakalaka Baby", deserves to be a dance-floor hit, and the tabla drumming and bhangra beats are exhilarating. I just longed for more of the haunting Eastern ululations which fleetingly surface in the midst of more harmonically familiar show tunes.

England is, meanwhile, a far from romanticised realm in Rose Rage, a bold adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry VI trilogy, presented by Edward Hall's all-male and star-free troupe, Propeller. To be honest, the Bard's early chronicle of the Wars of the Roses does bang on. So in hacking away at the script to create a two-parter, Hall and his co-editor Roger Warren mainly generate welcome momentum. Setting the action in an abattoir, plus hints of a nasty boys' school gym, also packs a punch – with rusty lockers, swinging chains and hooks designed by Michael Pavelka.

The jack-booted corps, playing brutally ambitious aristocrats, sometimes don butchers' overalls and, while choiring old hymns, create tension by grating cleavers and flick-knives against rough steels. The violence is also strikingly stylised, with mimed executions accompanied by the gruesome chopping of offal.

There are drawbacks. I missed the ambivalent figure of Joan of Arc, axed from the text. As Henry VI, Jonathan McGuinness is characterless and Robert Hands' Queen Margaret falls short when grief-stricken. But he's delightfully sharp in more manipulative scenes, clearly wearing the trousers in the royal marriage beneath his pearls and fur stole.

Collectively, this ensemble outshine the nominally glittering casts seen of late at the Haymarket in productions by Edward's father, Sir Peter, and this riskier programming deserves applause.

Another kind of internal war is fought in The Shadow of a Boy – the latest Loft premiere by a fledgling writer. Gary Owen's rite-of-passage drama is set in backwater Wales in the early 1980s. Luke is a God-fearing orphan who's anxious about starting at the local comp. He keeps crossing paths with Katie who's slightly older and a vicious tease. She particularly scares him about Armageddon being imminent ("They're gonna fry us. With great big bombs. And even one bomb is enough to destroy the Earth.")

Luke has an invisible friend/foe as well. The Shadow is, supposedly, an alien from space. Cutely naive at first, he increasingly seems like a mean alter ego as Luke becomes more desperate.

There's one terrifically funny and edgy scene when Katie compels Luke to play a game called "Nervous?" This involves edging your hand up your opponent's thigh and repeatedly asking the key question till they crumple.

Unfortunately, the rest of this show has you wondering how on earth you are going to survive, because it's so phenomenally dull. Though both bullying and nuclear attacks are pertinent issues at present, Owen's study of despair and destructiveness has minimal impact with director Erica Whyman's lethargic pacing and a stolid performance from Rob Storr, the adult actor who plays Luke. Catrin Rhys's spiky Katie and Jo Stone-Fewing's sporadically malign Shadow struggle to be dramatically engaging in his company.

Finally, it's back to Shakespeare on the Fringe. Who Goes There? is a promenade, multimedia, deconstructed version of Hamlet with speeches literally reduced to snippets and tossed into the air like confetti. One might be tempted to retitle the play Where Are We Going With This?, and Dreamthinkspeak theatre company have a long way to go regarding spooky atmospherics.

Nevertheless, there is a sense of adventure as you're ushered through the attics and back corridors of Battersea Arts Centre. Eavesdrop on conversations in the marble foyer, you become complicit with Polonius's snooping bureaucracy and, elsewhere, home movies of happier times flicker above Angus Hubbard's scrawny Prince like haunting memories. Sporadically illuminating.

k.bassett@independent.co.uk

'Bombay Dreams': Apollo Victoria, London SW1 (0870 4000 650), booking to 29 Sept; 'Rose Rage': Haymarket Theatre Royal, London SW1 (0870 901 3356), to 21 July; 'The Shadow of a Boy': NT Loft, London SE1 (020 7452 3000), to Sat; 'Who Goes There?': BAC, London SW11 (020 7223 2223), to 7 July