A Small Mind At The Theatre

The last couple of shows from the award-winning Northampton Musical Theatre Company has been a slightly mixed bag, with their last show at Derngate the rather difficult to get a grip on thrills of Grease , a woefully inferior stage version of the classic film despite being very well performed. Their best show recently was ironically Summer Holiday , hidden at the much smaller Cripps venue. Therefore still in the wake of the exceptional Sister Act , does The Wizard of Oz create the Derngate magic once again? The answer for me, is both yes and no, it is as always an exceptional production filled from top to tail with talent, as NMTC is so renowned for, and packing the audience in and thrilling them like perhaps nothing like Oz can in the musical department, you cannot question its selection really. However, like Grease , and to readjust a requote, "it's just Oz". This time I use it in the way that Oz is just a little over-familiar, I am desperate for the buzz that I go...

Last week at The Playhouse Theatre, Masque Theatre was presenting a one-act season of three plays directed by new and mentored directors. It offered a perfect opportunity (especially on Gala nights where all three were performed) to see a highly contrasting collection of three plays, ranging from a theatre of the absurd, period Coward comedy and a rock star beast of a play. The Lesson by Eugene Ionesco Directed by Lisa Wright, mentor Matthew Fell Theatre of the Absurd is not something that I am totally familiar with and based on this production I am still not that certain I am to be a fan. This isn't the fault of the play itself, however, but more of events on the evening I saw it. It starts extremely well, a maid of a professor (played with scene-stealing relish by Katy Corrie) welcomes a pupil at the door played by Masque newcomer Caitie Pardoe. As the professor, Chris East not only looks the part, but has the nervy, and edgy energy, to make it work in the movem...

Some other very wise person has probably described Harold Pinter as a marmite playwright, however, if they have I still claim it as my own and happily used it a few times, before, during the interval and after this new production of The Caretaker, from director Christopher Haydon (a co-production between Bristol Old Vic and Royal & Derngate). Pinter has a strange style which you clearly either get or don't. Since seeing his work first in 2013, with The Hothouse at Trafalgar Studios, I have come down in the first camp of "enjoying" his work. I have to be honest though in the fact that I have difficulty working out why. The Caretaker is a prime example of the originality and oddness of Pinter, Aston meets a tramp, Davies, before the play opens, and brings him to "his" house and allows him to sleep there. Soon Mick arrives, Aston's younger brother and things become less clear of the status of these three. Over the course of two hours or so, characters ...

As I settled down in my chair at the Derngate to see this touring production of the musical Legally Blonde , I generally had no idea what I was letting myself in for. Never having seen the film, read little up on the show, as is my want, and sitting in a clearly unbalanced gender demographic, this show was quite clearly not targeted at me. As the opening number, a catchy, but the incredibly screechy song, Omigod You Guys was performed, I was not, let's say, won over at first. However, it was clear that this just served as an overwhelming and ridiculous setup to the boldness of the show. The second number, Serious was a much better experience and genuinely funny song and throughout the tracks to come, there was much better to come. Our lead is Elle Woods (a charming, bubbly Lucie Jones), a typical caricatured blonde whose sole aim in life is to get the hand of her love in life Warner Huntingdon III (Liam Doyle). When he breaks up with her in pursuit of someone "serious...

Following an interesting journey, myself, Keith, Karl, Tarquin and three ladies (it was clearly a big car) arrived at Kettering to see the Theats production of the classic musical West Side Story . This was a number of firsts for me, with my first visit to The Lighthouse Theatre, the first time I had seen theatre group Theats and my first viewing of West Side Story . Despite never having seen the classic musical before, I was overwhelmingly familiar with it through both the exceptional songs that come from it and the original Bard source. It is an extremely challenging show to stage I imagine with both the tasking songs and the famous dance routines that have cast its place in history. For the most part, the amateur group Theats takes this challenge and wins, primarily with its casting of the two iconic leads Maria and Tony, in these roles Lauren Jones and Daniel Fortune form an exceptional partnership on stage and performing both their solos and duets with a confident e...

This touring show from The Wardrobe Ensemble arrives at Northampton (a co-production location) with a substantial amount of success, proudly displaying on the programmes back cover ten review ratings featuring 43 stars from a possible 50. However not wishing to be swayed by such incredible past form, I settled in the Royal to attempt to form my own opinion of the situation blinkered as much as possible from the stars shining bright. Emily Greenslade (Emily Greenslade) Education, Education, Education (henceforth known as Education . Phew!) is set on the day after the day before of Tony Blair and his New Labour sweeping to power in May 1997. We are in a "normal" comprehensive school as a new day, and a new hope dawns for the teachers and pupils alike. Flushed with this hope and a Eurovision win, things clearly will only get better. Or will they? Education ticks a number of theatres loves for me early on, with superb use of music, sharp scene changes and best of all a...

As we settled in the theatre ahead of the performance of this touring version of the, up to then unfamiliar to me, Shirley Valentine, I could not have realised that a slight inner-Valentine part of me, old before my time, had emerged. Making note of the far too loud pre-show music in the theatre was a typical old person thing to comment on, which verbally I tried to discuss over the aforesaid loud music with my company for the evening. I feel it's a far point though, as this eighties written piece from Willy Russell was clearly mostly catering for a certain age group and therefore I suspect comment and thought of this music might not have just lain within my thoughts. Fortunately, however, this minor issue was to be the lowest point of this highly entertaining evening and revival of Russell's well-regarded classic. Shirley is a tired and ill-appreciated housewife, preparing dinner for her working husband as she relays the conversation with both us and "wall" of...