Review of Much Ado About Nothing at Isham Dark (Avenue Campus), Northampton

Aficionados of Shakespeare would probably recoil at "The Story" on the back of the programme for the BA Acting & Creative Practice second-year students production of the Bard's comedy Much Ado About Nothing. In short, it refers to Don Pedro returning with his regiment from the Falklands, and stopping off at Leonato's hotel in Greenland on the way. Elsewhere Don Pedro's brother Don Jon is on the lookout for juicy stories for the tabloid newspaper he edits. Claudia has fallen in love with Hero, Benedict says he never will fall in love. Meanwhile, the Sirius Arctic Dog Patrol keeps things in line and Balthasar with her trusty guitar keeps the music rolling.

Yes, this is 1982, and we are in a world of a very different Much Ado About Nothing, and oddly it mostly seems to work.

As expected there are some great performances, even at this second-year stage. There is great style and much more period feel to the ladies in the play than the gents, so Beatrice (Libby Homer-Doyle) and Hero (Lois Gold) have a very eighties feel, both being excellent characterisations.

The gents are a little more traditional, even if their look is not. Keon McDermott is an excellent Benedict, filling the hugely comical role with his own enthusiasm. The scene where he overhears proceedings is buoyant with energy from McDermott, bouncing around the back of all the seated areas and very literally throwing himself into the performance.

I enjoyed also the stately like performance from Jonathan Mansfield as Don Pedro, authoritative as only the leader should be. Leanne Avery was a sharp and stylish Antonia, and Amy Crighton brought superb presence and weight to the role of Leonato.

Elsewhere, Sasha Russell was an intense firecracker performer as Dogberry, and styled magnificently and more than a little scary with a horsewhip (even managing to break part of it with her passion). Lindsay Crawford was superb as her two very different characters of Friar, all refined, and Verges, all wacky and awkward, two brilliantly distinctive roles sharply played.

Finally, Emily Ashberry as Baltazar, transformed into Adam Ant and with guitar, bringing some superb reworked versions of many eighties tracks (how brilliant was Let's Dance!). Her little interludes were one of the best parts of the show, brilliantly performed and cleverly conceived. Fab stuff!

Director Dan McGarry has made the perhaps unbelievable work with this version of the Shakespeare comedy. He gets great energy from all his performers and by the very end as Walking On Sunshine fades away, you feel you have had an extremely fun afternoon.

Performance viewed: Saturday 18th May, 2019 (matinee) at Isham Dark, University Of Northampton (Avenue Campus).

Much Ado About Nothing ran until Saturday 18th May, 2019
Twitter feed for the University actors is @BA_Actors

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 Immune by R&D Youth Theatre at Royal & Derngate (Royal), Northampton

The cover note for the script of Oladipo Agboluaje's Immune describes it as "a challenging science fiction play with a large cast", and the word challenging in this case is not a lie. This is a fast paced, multi-cast changing script which leaves little room for error for its young cast in the performance. If the script isn't enough to handle for the young performers, director Christopher Elmer-Gorry and designer Carl Davies have made the situation even more complex for the actors with the set and stage work. Having to manhandle great panels on wheels and a huge cube, which also splits in two occasionally, during scene changes requires skill, coordination and cooperation of a high level. As if all this is not enough, the actual story is epic enough for the relatively small stage of the Royal. Attempting to form an apocalyptic world (albeit only happening in Plymouth) offers challenges in itself, but Agboluaje's script does that in a sort of apocalypse in the teac...

Review of Legally Blonde at Royal & Derngate (Derngate), Northampton

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...

A Small Mind At The Theatre

Search This Blog