Lewis Renninson and Company in Chichester Festival Youth Theatre’s Pinocchio. Photo: Manuel Harlan
Performed by CFT’s Youth Theatre.
A year ago I watched this show on Zoom because Covid regulations were tightening by the hour. Then, they had to cancel the rest of the run. What a joy, this year to see it revived and to be there in person.
Now in the hands of revival director, Bobby Brook, Pinocchio which was originally directed by Dale Rook has a cast of sixty-eight, about half of whom were in last year’s aborted production. Some young actors are back but in different roles, all demonstrating what a marvellously developmental experience CFT’s Youth Theatre is.
Anna Ledwich’s adaptation of Carlo Collodi’s novel stresses the family values, forgiveness and redemption which underpin this story of a puppet turned boy who runs away, tells lies and makes lots of mistakes but is eventually reunited, contrite, humble and relieved with his puppet maker father.
It’s a piece which lends itself to working in bubbles (if you need to) because it’s episodic – most sections using immaculately well directed ensemble to good effect. And I still like the way Ledwich’s text manages to work in a bit of environmental awareness in the underwater scene.
There is a certain amount of cast rotation. On press night I saw Lewis Renninson as Pinocchio, wobbling his way to boyhood with professional panache. I especially liked his donkey dance during that sinister episode when he is turned into a donkey by a cruel circus owner and forced to dance as an attraction.
Funmi Ajayi gives us a very commonsensible but glittery fairy who acts as a sort of invisible guardian to Pinocchio. And Honami Davies does a fine job as the cricket who is Pinocchio’s forthright voice of conscience. Of course he often ignores her and she gets very cross.
It isn’t easy for a teenager to portray an old man but Spencer Dixon is pretty convincing as Gepetto whose unconditional love for his “son” is quite moving. I was moved too by the way they hugged each other. Last year hugs had to be mimed because of social distancing rules.
Tom Brady’s music purrs happily along in the capable hands of an (unseen, unfortunately) six-piece live band led by Colin Billing. There’s a duet between Pinocchio and Geppetto which stands out for its attractive harmony. And as last year I especially liked slinky Cat and Fox number with its hint of Kurt Weill.
I can’t finish this review without a word of praise for Isobel Buckler’s delightful, shiny orange Lobster with the Russian accent. Her nonchalance and stage presence gets a well deserved audience chuckle every time she speaks.
It’s a fine show of its type – and I see quite a lot of youth and student work. As ever Chichester does it splendidly.
I was not aware of Angel Shed Theatre Company before this visit, but I will certainly look forward to seeing more of their work in future. It’s always good to see young people developing their performance skills, whether that be through taking part in an adult-directed school play or in something more small-scale and where they can have much more input. It’s unusual, however, to find a group where the young people involved are able to develop their skills in writing and directing as well as performing, as is the case with London Behind Closed Doors.
The performance was by Angel Shed’s Youth Theatre 2, who are aged 13 to 19; Angel Shed work with four different age-based groups as well as Music and Dance companies. Due to the pandemic, the work has been developed over a long period of well over a year. Short pieces involving small numbers of young people were topped and tailed by ensemble sections that tied the evening together.
This inclusive and diverse group of 16 young people presented a range of aspects of London life as they experience it: on the bus, in the street and at eating places. Using the performance space at City and Islington College meant that the audience could see well and the cast had the benefit of good lighting and sound to support their work. I very much enjoyed learning about these young people’s lives and their perceptions of how other people live theirs.
If there was an undertone to the evening it was a slightly offbeat one that seemed to sit well with the cast and indicated their involvement with, and control over, the material. Some of the performers had a quiet but reassuring stage presence which focussed attention on what they were saying; others achieved their effects through movement or by dialogue.
The cast were well rehearsed and mostly coped well with the difficulties of voice projection in a large space. There were occasionally signs of not being sure how to end a section, but that is the eternal problem for writers of sketch format pieces. The beginning and end pieces with the whole group worked very well, with the bus sketch getting its effect through strong characterisation and well-judged movement. The Q&A with the cast, expertly facilitated, rounded off the evening well and indicated the extent to which the cast had benefitted from the experience.
Angel Shed’s strapline is Inclusivity Through Theatre, and their inclusivity is total: anyone is welcome to join, they never audition, workshops are free to those who cannot afford them and support is provided where necessary. It is difficult to know how to rate performances like this as there is nothing to compare it to – but due to the enterprise, commitment and achievement shown, and above all the level of inclusivity, this was a five star experience for cast and audience.
Putting on any school production is a major task, and to do so involving an enormous cast, a full orchestra and to a high standard is a great achievement. Well done, then, to Director Chris Chambers and all the team behind the Trinity School production of Shrek the Musical. It helped, of course, that the school has a well-equipped and comfortable concert hall with a large stage, but none of that would have been enough without a talented cast.
With a cast of around 60 and a large orchestra, it is impossible to mention more than a few names. In the lead role, Ethan Thorne (alternating with Barney Sayburn) has a relaxed approach that suits the character (though saddled with a rather misshapen fat suit) and a Scots accent that is probably better than that adopted by Mike Myers in the original film. Opposite him as Fiona is Eliza Farrar (alternating with Anna Brovko), who has a sweet singing voice and copes well with the choreography. The double-casting of these two main roles was just one example of the thought put into this production by a school that is well used to performances of all kinds.
As Donkey (no alternate so I hope he keeps well) is Ashvin Jeyanandhan, in a portrayal which was all the more impressive for not attempting to copy the original. He is a confident performer with great stage presence, knows how to sell a song, and gave every sign of enjoying the role, which always helps. The other key role is that of Lord Farquaad, to which Matteo Di Lorenzo brought a nicely understated approach and great attention to detail, as well as some of the best costumes of the evening.
Around these three key performers were a vast number of young people of all ages in parts large and small. Among those who caught the eye early on was Lucy Pritchard as Young Fiona. She totally owned the stage, especially when she sang, and already has the skill to put a song over with verve, vigour and clarity. Also making the most of his chance to sing was Jonah Newlands as Pinocchio, who was not afraid to command the stage. George Nearn Stuart is an excellent dancer as the Pied Piper, although the chorus behind him looked rather less comfortable in their tap shoes. Phoebe Nichols as Gingy has a great blues voice, and Tweedledum and Tweedledee (Robert Green and Kiaro King) had little to do but did it with style and energy.
If there was a prize for getting the most audience attention from the smallest part, it would undoubtedly be won by Alexander Molony as the more than slightly tipsy Bishop; a lovely portrayal that was kept up even when his moment was over, staying (just) the right side of upstaging everyone else. The whole cast were colourfully costumed and this, together with wigs, was a real strength of the production. Lighting and FX too contributed greatly, and it was good to see school students in backstage roles as well as in the cast.
Leaving the orchestra under Musical Director Ralph Barlow till last seems appropriate since the music is a vital part of a show like Shrek, and of course Trinity has a musical reputation that raised expectations. These were more than met since this was a superb orchestra, almost all the players being students, as disciplined as they were talented. They were the core of the show, and the cast gave it the necessary heart: well done to all concerned. A great achievement.
The retiring collection was in aid of the school’s Malawi Project Christmas Appeal.
Chickenshed doesn’t believe in doing things by halves. A cast of 800 young people – yes, 800 (but not all at once) – and 23 adults demonstrate, yet again, just what this famously diverse, inclusive theatre company can do, even when their work has been pandemic-curtailed for much of this year.
This show which owes a tiny conceptual debt to Sondheim’s Into the Woods, is a reworking of a show which Chickenshed staged in 2006 and it does exactly what its strapline promises. It mixes up fairy tales with lots of song, spectacle and flair.
At the heart of it we have the brothers Grimm and one of them (Lauren Cambridge) is female. Cue for witty, topical comments about gender constructs and patriarchal assumptions. They are trying to write stories, and the dynamic between them is quite fun, but their characters keep escaping. The overarching narrative is Hansel and Gretel who are lost so their father (Ashley Driver) is on a quest to find them despite the machinations of, for example, Rumpelstiltskin (Michael Bossise) and the Queen (Gemilla Shamruk) mother of the dancing princesses.
Bossise is statuesque, astonishingly adept on his stilts and has a magnificent basso profundo singing voice. He also has a good line in sounding very plausible when of course his character is up to no good at all. Bethany Hamlin as Hansel and Gretel’s stepmother/witch has oodles of stage presence – lots of flounce and venom – and she sings beautifully.
I really like the idea of pairing BSL signers – who are often accomplished acrobats, singers and actors in their own right – to characters so they seem like an alter ego. Demar Lambert, for instance, “represents” Rumpelstiltskin and adds another whole layer to the character. I don’t remember this being quite so overt in previous Chickenshed shows so maybe this is the handprint of Belinda McGuirk, directing for the first time.
Another Chickenshed trademark is to give short single verse solos to lots of children – as well as the adult big numbers – so we see a lot of talent and teamwork as the show proceeds.
The 23 adults – 12 staff members and 11 students or trainees – are in every performance. The children work in four rotas and I saw the Green Rota in action. And the best moments in this show are when the stage fills up with them, immaculate, dynamic choreography (by a team) ensuring that they form groups, shapes and rhythms like a professional army. Some of the children have special needs of various sorts and it’s a lump-in-the-throat joy to see the slick way they are involved, supported and fully included. Even the curtain call is a work of art with over two hundred people on stage – and I’m told that back stage discipline, always good, is now calmer and better organised than ever because there’s a one way system which everyone adheres to. Professionalism at its best.
Our House is strange beast. It’s full of good tunes and ska vibrance but, as a jukebox musical the plot is weak – despite the valiant efforts of writer, Tim Firth. And in this production the complicated, rather clumsy double narrative plot is far from clear. It doesn’t help that – obviously in a youth company – there’s no range of ages to distinguish character. And the setting is odd. It’s meant to be around 1980 and yet characters are using mobiles. I’ve seen other versions of this show with stronger story telling.
There is, however a lot to admire here. Toby Owers shines brightly as Joe Casey, the young man who takes his girlfriend trespassing on a first date and knows that unless he’s to go the same way as his dad (Rodger Lloyd) who went to prison and who haunts his son onstage, he has to make choices. For the rest of the show we see two alternating versions of what Bad Joe and Good Joe might have gone on to do.
Also outstanding is Alfie Peckham as the enticing Reecey who is definitely bad news for Joe. And there’s lovely work from Daisy Bates as Joe’s girl friend. She has lithe stage presence and she sings with clarity and beauty.
There were occasional problems with the sound mixing in the performance I saw. Sometimes the balance was wrong and the dialogue got lost. I was pleased, though, to see the seven-piece band clearly visible on a narrow upstage additional platform with some of the action taking place on this level too, accessed from the stage by a ladder.
So far this is three-star show. It gets its extra star for two reasons.
First, I know that every single young person in this production was working flat out with the sort of infectious enthusiasm that you rarely see on a professional stage. That’s wonderfully uplifting. They achieve a high standard.
Second, and most important of all, Chris Cuming’s direction and choreography is the real star of this show. He knows exactly how to get the very best possible work out of his big ensemble and the end product – as they twist, lean, jump, point, somersault and much more – in time and at high speed is a masterclass in how it should be done.
There’s a lot to be said for a musical about being thirteen and wanting a really good Bar Mitzvah being done by young performers who are exactly the right age. When this show, which dates from 2007, ran on Broadway the cast were adult. On the other hand it’s a huge challenge for a single actor (Edward Flynn-Haddon – as Evan) to take centre-stage alone at the beginning and somehow kick it off, especially when there’s an initial problem with sound balance and his words are inaudible. Or at least that was the case from my seat in the third row.
Because his parents have just divorced, Evan is whisked from busy New York, where his friends are, to make a new start with his mother in a small town in Indiana, “The Lamest Place in the World”. What follows is very recognisable story about making friends, burgeoning obsessive interest in the opposite sex and finding ways of surviving in the rough and tumble of everyday teenage life with all its awkwardness. Everybody wants to go out with the Kendra (Rebecca Nardin – charismatic). There’s also a gentle inclusion story because one of the boys, Archie (Ethan Quinn – interesting) is disabled by a degenerative disease.
Cadogan Hall is, of course, a concert hall not a theatre and this is a semi-staged production with the very large ensemble seated on chairs in angled rows with the band (immaculately led by MD Chris Ma on keys but sometimes too loud) upstage at the apex. The action takes place in the downstage triangular space without props or set – apart from the occasional use of chairs already there.
Songs are interspersed with spoken dialogue which comes with the usual problem of young actors grappling with American accents and often losing clarity. Some of Jason Robert Brown’s songs are lovely, however: “Tell Her”, well sung by Eward Flynn-Haddon and Ivy Pratt as Patrice, for example, really delivers some evocative harmony.
Timi Akinyosade stands out as Malcolm. His dancing draws the eye and he sings with gusto as well as being convincing as a lad about school closely bonded with Samuel Mehinick’s Brett. The latter gives a fine performance too – snarling, threatening and eyeing up to conceal his vulnerability.
The choreography is this show is magnificent. Despite the huge ensemble and the limitations of the space Corin Miller makes every single movement shine with joie de vivre and I was impressed by the professional stillness of the ensemble when seated.
This show starts rather creakily, probably because of youthful nervousness and inexperience, but warms up pretty rapidly so that 90 minutes later the post curtain call, full cast, dance is exuberantly, infectiously vibrant – and exhausting to watch for anyone over the age of about 16!
Commissioned by NYMT in 2017, this revival showcases the talents of an enthusiastic, talented young company and, as ever, it’s the imaginative direction (lots of slow motion with chairs, for instance) which really lifts it.
Richard Hough’s feel-good, happy ending story is a long way from the historical facts about Henry McCarty – aka Billy the Kid – an outlaw who shot and killed eight men before being shot at age 21. Instead we meet a very young Billy (Charlie Wright) who, in a neat framing device is trying to find the courage to face down an aggressive group of bullies in his 21st century school.
Daydreaming as an escape, while the teacher recounts the events of the 1860s, Billy becomes a forceful, but ultimately moral, hero in his own story as we flash back colourfully to the saloon bar and the sauve-qui-peut of the days when the whole town was under a protection racket. With a hint of the Wizard of Oz the bullies and the nineteenth century gang are all played by the same actors. Other school characters reappear in different guises in his dream – a group of five leggy, sporty, all-American cheerleader types become a very good troupe of saloon bar dancers, for example.
And behind all this is Ben Morales Frost’s enjoyable score with all the off beat sequences and lyricism which evoke the world of late nineteenth century cowboy country. The inevitable hoe down scene is a delight. It isn’t quite Aaron Copland but it’s great fun.
Charlie Wright – only 14 and physically quite small – steals the show as Billy. He gives us wistfulness spliced with strength and pragmatism finally overcome by wisdom. It’s quite a nuanced performance and his singing is both sensitive and mature.
The support cast is strong and the piece is written to give lots of characters a moment in the spotlight so we hear a number of good soloists amongst whom Sophie Muringu stands out as Mary, the bar co-owner who becomes a moral support in Billy’s life. She sings beautifully and her acting is totally convincing.
We’re in Lincoln County, New Mexico and the atmosphere is spot on with some sultry lighting and wheel-on-and-off sets, the movement of which is integrated into ensemble action. The southern accents are harder for a young cast to nail and some of the vowel sounds are inappropriately distorted but these young people have worked together for only a short time and it really doesn’t matter much.
One of the things I like very much about NYMT shows is the use of a vibrant youth band and the habit of bringing them all on stage at curtain call. They play beautifully in this show and Olivia Howdle’s eloquent violin work really stood out for me.
We’re in Anne Frank territory. It’s Amsterdam in 1944. Some Jews are in hiding, some people are trying to help them while others – we’re in the heart of the community with people who’ve known each other all their lives – agree with occupying Nazi policy or seem to. And at the centre of all this is a sparky child (role shared between Charlie Herlihy and Ellie Jones across different performances) whose origins suddenly turn out to be not quite what she has been brought up to believe.
There’s plenty of warmth, a lot of drama and if the story telling is disjointedly unclear at the beginning before the piece gradually slides into focus then it doesn’t matter much. The early scenes actually seem hideously topical as we watch people fleeing from danger in a week when we’re all thinking about the situation in Afghanistan.
Commissioned from Alex Parker and Katie Lam by NYMT for last year but, perforce, postponed until now Henrietta is a good piece for a youth organisation. Because NYMT works with young people from age 10-23 there are children to play the juvenile roles along with competent performers in their early 20s able to play adults in their thirties with conviction. In fact Reuben Browne, 22, plays an older teacher (he has taught Henrietta’s mother) and it works – he also sings with panache especially in the lilting 3|4 number in which he tells Henrietta a story about his own son which then morphs (tempo and key change) into an impassioned lament and declaration of pride.
Izzie Mackie is strong as teacher Miss Van de Berg who hides behind a stereotype in Act 1 before revealing herself ( eventually reaching a fabulous full belt) as something quite different in Act 2. Sydney Richards is moving as Rachel who leaves Amsterdam (and a lot more besides) with her husband to live elsewhere in safety.
Skilfully directed by Kate Colledge, the talents of everyone in this accomplished casa of 32 are exploited and I really love Lucinda Lawrence’s choreography which takes every opportunity to present children as children – dancing and playing with glee despite the horrors going on around them. Set changes are neatly choreographed in too so the whole thing is seamless.
And joy of joy – this is what gets Henrietta its fourth star – is the live youth band, who, tucked away out of sight, produce great richness and sound very professional. I was delighted to see them all brought on stage at the end for their own curtain call.
The combination of Dzifa Benson’s abridgement/adapation, Miranda Cromwell’s direction and – I infer – a great deal of intelligent cast workshopping has resulted in a very thoughtful, contemporary take on Othello.
We’re in a nightclub or outside it. Screens are manually moved to change the space with a lot of play on shadows and light playing through the screens. Rennell Shaw’s sound design at times provides music to dance to. At others the dance is aurally so distant that all we hear is a menacing drum beat adding tension to the dialogue it sits beneath.
Did I say dialogue? It’s very clever. Benson has got one of Shakespeare’s longer tragedies down to a nifty 90 minutes without cutting anything important. Most of the words are Shakespeare’s but they’re often intercut with a modern phrase. Several times, for instant, she pops in the word “fu**ing” which really makes it sound as it these people are arguing in a 2021 Manchester night club.
Yes, we’ve seen a female Othello before but not very often so casting Francesca Amewudah-Rivers feels pretty fresh. She has all the right confident gravitas at the beginning and then – manipulated by Iago (Connor Crawford and repugnantly good in the role) – she falls apart very effectively as she is consumed first by jealousy and then by remorse.
Amongst a generally strong cast I was also especially impressed by Julia Kass as Emilia – at first agreeing to do what Iago tells her and then realising the horror that she has caused and explaining. Her control as she becomes more and more impassioned is both convincing and noteworthy. And Adeola Yemitan’s spikey movement work and singing is so charismatically fascinating that it is almost a distraction.
The other really distinctive feature about this production is the imaginative chorus work. Several actors are on the stage in the background as an ensemble much of the time. When, for example, Othello is deeply troubled they become the voices in her head.
This Othello is the most radically reimagined I’ve seem since I saw the one at Intermission Theatre several years ago. And it works – especially as we emerge from the pandemdic still trying to confront issues of racism and abuse. The topicality is remarkable. It was also a treat to go the NYT’s newly refurbished premises on the Holloway Road and experience its new onsite theatre.
