Skip to main content

Review of West Side Story at The Lighthouse Theatre, Kettering

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 ease. Lauren particularly (who I have seen once before in A Tired Heart & The Big C) has an amazing stage precense that belies her age and is assured of future success.

Another performer that I have seen before (a few times actually) and one who has never been a letdown is Susie Pack, who here provides a likeable, but equally perfectly troubled performance as Anita. Strong on stage (what slip?) and once again effortlessly holding the tunes. From the others, I felt Kevin Maltby was the strongest of the gangs as Action, and Carly Walker was huge fun as Anybodys.

Less successful and rather disappointingly are the Jets and the Sharks scenes, so key to the pace and drive of the story, these really end up playing rather pedestrian. The opening scene sucks the life out of the show at the very beginning, taking an age it seems to get going. Likewise, the first bar scene brings the whole show to a grinding halt as well with its slow pace, all making the first act really slow at times, and at 90 minutes, that's not what you really want. It is a shame as there are some great characters developed within by the cast, but the drama and aggression of the words rarely offer the true buildup to events. Many of the fight scenes though when they do occur are generally well staged, however, just getting to them is a bind.

There were also, unfortunately, a few technical issues going on, with occasional dodgy mics, or sometimes not even on, leaving some dialogue lost, especially when the music underscore is at work. It has to be said that the lighting also runs a gamut of being both brilliant and very poor on occasion with the switching of the green/red both working and occasionally clearly not and being very evident with the latter. Also, note to stage crew changing scenes, don't look at the audience, you know who you are.

There appears to be a lot of negatives going on here, which might suggest that I didn't enjoy the show. However, this isn't true. As already mentioned, the two leads bring so much to the show that it is never going to disappoint. Likewise, the effort of the whole cast makes the show special enough in itself. I take my joy from the little moments sometimes that I see on stage, like in the first act scene where a flower having fallen off a performer is neatly retrieved by their onstage partner, and then brilliantly brought into the character with a playful stage left moment with that partner. Moments like this show how performers get their character and these ancillary moments I love often more than where the eye is meant to be because it creates the whole picture and therefore world of the show.

At the end of the evening, it is clear that Theats have done well with a challenging show and while there are some issues and disappointment, both I and the absolutely packed audience simply loved it.

Performance reviewed: Friday 13th October 2017 at the Lighthouse Theatre, Kettering.

West Side Story by Theats ran at the Lighthouse Theatre between Wednesday 11th and Saturday 14th October, 2017. Details of Theats can be found at http://www.theats.co.uk/

For details about The Lighthouse see their website at 
https://lighthousetheatre.co.uk/

Popular posts from this blog

Review of Murder She Didn't Write at Royal & Derngate (Royal), Northampton

Murder She Didn't Write , stopping off for a four-day run at Royal & Derngate on a lengthy UK tour, treads the now well-worn path of an improvisational evening of theatre entertainment. Unsurprisingly, from the title, this show from Degrees of Error's takes a murder mystery as its inspiration, with the story influenced by ideas from the audience each evening. Due to this, Murder She Didn't Write and a review are very much an individual affair. What I saw in my evening at the theatre will differ significantly from what the audience will see the following evening; however, the fine performers will remain. The touring cast, in no particular order, is Lizzy Skrzypiec, Rachael Procter-Lane, Peter Baker, Caitlin Campbell, Stephen Clements, Douglas Walker, Harry Allmark, Rosalind Beeson, Sylvia Bishop, Emily Brady, Alice Lamb, Sara Garrard, Peta Maurice and Matthew Whittle. For my performance, Skrzypiec, Procter-Lane, Baker, Walker, Bishop, and Clements were on stage alongsid...

Review of Bat Out Of Hell - The Musical at Milton Keynes Theatre

Bat Out of Hell - The Musical was first realised as a stage musical back in 2017, opening at the Manchester Opera House. Since then, it has achieved significant international success. Now, as part of a new UK tour, it has returned to Milton Keynes Theatre, which it previously visited in 2022 during its global tour. The storyline of Bat Out of Hell , written by Jim Steinman, draws on the story of Peter Pan as a basis and evolves it within a dystopian world, where a group of teenagers known as The Lost live forever at the age of 18. This plot is both flimsy and initially confusing; however, within the music of Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman, it finds a rough-around-the-edges polish that allows this weakness to shine through and succeed. At the centre of this group of teenagers is Strat, who, following an unexpected encounter, falls under the spell of Raven. Within this, a megalomaniac lurks, as all dystopian worlds require. This maniac is Falco, the father of Raven and Sloane's husband....

Review of My Mother's Funeral: The Show at Royal & Derngate (Royal), Northampton

The title My Mother's Funeral: The Show is perhaps not the most attractive title for a theatre show, however, this show had great success at the Edinburgh Fringe and now arriving at Royal & Derngate, one of its co-producing theatres, so, let's look beyond the unusual title and see what lies beneath. Abigail is a theatre dramatist pursuing plays that the theatres no longer want. Her "gay bugs in space" saga falls foul of being fiction for a start, something a theatre director states audiences no longer want stating they want gritty, real experiences, theatre with painful truths. So, after Abigail devastatingly loses her mother and finds no money to pay the funeral fees, she pursues the creation of a very personal theatre show. My Mother's Funeral: The Show is gritty and sad, but, also in many ways very funny, if in a dark way. Writer Kelly Jones digs deep into the world of poverty in Dagenham and countless estates across the country. A world of people born in...