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...

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...

I had created so much anticipation for myself with Danny Hero at The Core, that there was perhaps an almost inevitability that it would end up a disappointment. Sadly it was, despite it still be a tremendously entertaining show. That is a brilliantly weird introduction to a review, so I think I should explain myself. I personally believe that the pre-publicity for the show had a seriously contrasting positive/negative effect and offers interesting thoughts on how to publicise a show. Trailers by their inherent nature offer nuggets of delight, often making a show appear far better than it turns out. Those behind Danny Hero chose to run a large bulk of publicity with a YouTube recording of a song from the show, Man Of Steel . It worked in selling my ticket, as after I heard it, it was pretty much 90% of the reason I decided to make absolutely sure I got to see the show. So, it did its job. Ensemble However the problem lies with the fact that Man Of Steel is a simply incredible m...