A Small Mind At The Theatre

Last week it was that time of year again when the talented amateur performers of the Northampton Musical Theatre Company got their moment upon the big stage of the Derngate. This year their ambition was to bring Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents' ambitious West Side Story to the stage. Mixing classic songs and challenging dance routines revolving around the fifties set retelling of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet , this was a tremendously tough show for an amateur group to take on. However, as expected, this talented, and always near professional group made it work, despite a very shaky start. The opening, and classic, dance routine between the Jets and the Sharks, merging ballet with contemporary, never quite works, not due to lack of effort of the performers, it's just that it is just so tough to get right. It is though probably the one slightly weak part of the evening. From then on, bar a few slightly stilted dance routines, West Side Story bec...

It is safe to say that I love the Northampton Musical Theatre Company, while there are many other amateur groups in the town, they for me hold the mantle of being the most professional. Much of this is because of the absolute belief needed to make their shows work at all, these productions don't just require acting like most of the other groups, this little group has to throw singing and dancing as well into the mix for its performers. Perhaps because of this and the fact that performers of this ilk are not finite, it can't always work and areas have to be cut where you can't get a whole cast that can do the full gamut. However, this is where the amateurs own neat trick comes to the forefront, over professional actors sometimes, enthusiasm. The very real reason these people do these things is not through monetary gain, it's because they first and foremost want to, and that always shows on stage, as it does through this latest production, Summer Holiday . I had a bit o...

The last two years have been an interesting path for the Northampton Musical Theatre Company at the Derngate. In 2014 their presentation of South Pacific was a remarkable feat which stood up so well in comparison with the soon to be professional staged Oklahoma! Then 2015 they took what might have been quite a gamble with a much less known title Sister Act, despite it being a huge film hit of the past, the musical was somewhat less known. It was a gamble that unquestionably paid off as the theatre was filled and it remains not just the very best amateur production of a musical I have seen, but superior in so many ways to professional touring shows. So maybe, just maybe, 2016's decision to present Grease as their big show has got to be a disappointment. I myself up to seeing this show hadn't seen Grease in a theatre live, but a lot of people have and I have spoken to many who were not going to this simply because they are, in my own contortion of their thoughts Greased out. Ho...