Skip to main content

Review of Café Crescendo - The Early Show by R&D Youth Theatre at Royal & Derngate (Underground), Northampton

I officially love leaning on a table while watching a play being performed. That is my conclusion of spending Sunday afternoon watching two youth theatre shows.

It helped of course that the shows in particular were of the most glorious and inventive variety, the first of which was performed by the specific Youth Theatre group (the younger stars in this case) and featured more than a hint of the Scooby Doo about it. Deprived of a dog, we had a band of five led by Shannon "Shamrock" played by Crystal Reilly with more than a hint of nastiness about her. Well a lot of nasty to be honest and her whipping boy mostly was poor old Cameron played with wonderful charm by Alfie Sanders.

This being a musical we were of course treated to a lot of wonderful little numbers, all excellently performed. The best of which had to be the solo ghostly performance of My House. This was the most wonderful of pieces delivered gorgeously by the young star whose name alas eludes me. Just perfect though and you know who you are.

Another lovely ensemble number was the recurring This Is A Ghost Story, a catchy little number which had some lovely little choreography with it. While mentioning this, this work by Helen Parlor was wonderful to see, it felt balanced just right to be a challenge while not being too complicated, therefore allowing the young performers to be confident with it.

Writer Christopher Elmer-Gorry has created a lovely little inventive piece and this coupled with co-director Trudy A Bell and the work of musical director James Clements and musician Joby Morris it all becomes a wonderfully entertaining show. Atmospheric, fun and full of talented young stars and the set of tables and chairs created the perfect layout for this very different theatre experience.



Performance reviewed: Sunday 25th May, 2015 (second show) at the Royal & Derngate (Underground), Northampton.

Café Crescendo was performed by the R&D Youth Theatre at the Royal & Derngate between Friday 22nd May and Sunday 24th May, 2015.

For further details about the Royal & Derngate visit their website at http://www.royalandderngate.co.uk/

Popular posts from this blog

Review of Here & Now at Milton Keynes Theatre

During the late 90s and early 2000s, the dance-pop group Steps was a mighty presence in the British charts. They accumulated two number-one albums in the UK and 14 consecutive UK top-5 singles, including two number ones. They were juggernauts of lightweight pop. It is perhaps a surprise that it took until 2024 for a musical to be based on their hits. Now, writer Shaun Kitchener brings enough campness to keep Alan Carr and Julian Clary in work for decades. Here & Now , the show everyone was waiting for, is at Milton Keynes Theatre as part of a UK tour. So, the question is: has it been worth the wait? Here & Now is, fundamentally, a ridiculous concept that should not work. Set in a supermarket, yes, a supermarket, our eclectic cast of characters go through the typical dramas of many a musical as love and drama unfold against a backdrop of jukebox music. It should never work, but it does, extremely well in fact. A huge amount of the success here has to go to writer Shaun Kitchene...

Review of Blood Brothers at Royal & Derngate (Derngate), Northampton

A theatre in the east midlands, a thousand people stand applauding and cheering towards a stage where fourteen people stand. There on the stage, they bow, and bow, an inordinate number of times. They depart after a time and the lights come up over the capacity audience. So did you hear the story of the Blood Brothers show, how people flocked and came to see them play? Did you never hear about how we came to be, standing applauding the brightly lit stage this November day? Come judge for yourselves how this night did come to be. Blood Brothers was a significant show for me back in 2014, being the first musical that I saw live. Hiding up in the upper circle of the Derngate back then, not really sure what to expect, it was it turned out perhaps the perfect show to graduate me from play to musical that I could choose as Willy Russell's gritty and solid story is as confident as a straight play that perhaps any musical is. So strong is the story of the Johnstone's twins, tha...

Review of National Theatre Connections 2017 (16 Shows) at Royal & Derngate (Royal & Underground), Northampton

Alongside the University of Northampton BA Actors Flash Festival, the Connections festival at Royal & Derngate is now my joint favourite week of theatre each year. This is my fourth year at the festival and each time I have tried my very best (and succeeded) in seeing more and more of those on offer (four in 2014, ten in 2015 and twelve last year). This year I cracked sixteen shows, including the most interesting, a chance to see two of the plays by three different groups. I was able to see nine of this year's ten plays (a single nagging one, Musical Differences by Robin French was missing from the R&D line-up), and most I either enjoyed or finally understood their merits or reasons for inclusion. The writing of sixteen reviews is a little bit of an daunting prospect, however, I will do my best to review each of the plays and those I saw more than once, and pick around the comparisons. Extremism by Anders Lustgarten Performed by Bedford College Extremism was perfo...