Hit film 'Bend It Like Beckham' takes to the stage as a musical

It was the film that launched the careers of Keira Knightley and Parminder Nagra, while also bringing issues such as sexual identity, interracial relationships and religion to mainstream cinema audiences.

Now, 12 years after the box office success of Bend It Like Beckham, the tale of a football-infatuated London Sikh teenager who defies her parents to join a local women's team has been turned into a stage musical that will open next May.

But while the story will still be set in 2001, the coincidence of the musical's opening date next year, just weeks after Britain goes to the polls, is not lost on Gurinder Chadha, the award-winning director of the film and now the musical, which she identifies as a "state-of-the-nation piece".

"We are opening in the year of the election and there are enough people out there who will be using race as a divisive mechanism during the election process, which traditionally and historically always happens, as we know," she says.

"What we are trying to do is make a stakehold for those of us who believe we live in a brilliant nation that is all the better for being as diverse and as interesting culturally as it is, and that it isn't just one community that has created this."