Flash Festival 2018: An Error In The Melody by Carousel Theatre Company at Hazelrigg House, Northampton

At the centre of Carousel Theatre's An Error in the Melody is an intriguing character, performed by the groups solo performer, Amelia Renard. She plays, with some skill, Leonie Owens, a composer of immense skill herself, well, in her head in any case.

With shades of Glorious! The true story of Florence Foster Jenkins, which I have also seen this year, Owens just wants to perform and absorb the love of an audience, despite the fact that her skills mostly just lie within her head. Owens perhaps isn't anywhere near as nice a character as Foster Jenkins though, and when the tide turns against her, she really is quite nasty, and definitely very cold.

The dislike of the character though isn't the biggest problem with An Error in the Melody, it's more that it is a very insubstantial piece. Two very long scenes in this play are just so lightweight, the opening where she tidies her shelves, mostly with her back to the audience, and then later another scene similar in style. It all, unfortunately, stalls the piece, and perhaps if the rest was solid and more importantly longer, these wouldn't have felt so bad, but this is also a very short performance, barely twenty minutes.

It's such a shame that you can't help but leave disappointed after Error in the Melody, it all stems from frustration really in its brevity, what happens beyond those two scenes is great, however, as it stands, it simply wasn't enough of a play. Development further would help this, as the character is strong, she just isn't given enough to do, so the show sadly feels half ready as a result.

Performance viewed: Thursday 26th April 2018

The Flash Festival 2018 ran between Monday 23rd and Friday 27th April 2018 at three venues across the town.

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...

A Small Mind At The Theatre

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