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...

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...

South Pacific at Royal & Derngate last year set a remarkable benchmark for an "amateur" production, with a large talented cast, superb vocals, sets and a polish up there with a professional production. Sister Act, this years production from the Northampton Musical Theatre Company was more of the same, but perhaps taken up a notch or two. Sister Act is a musical based on the 1992 Whoopi Goldberg comedy and was first performed in 2009. Written by Bill and Cheri Steinkellner, it is a likable and fun musical which genuinely came as a surprise to me. The opening scene at Curtis's Bar and Nightclub is to be honest not the best though and genuinely didn't fill me with much hope. It feels as if it gives nothing to the cast, although it creates the premise of the story coupled with the incident outside the bar. Likewise, I didn't take much to the Police Station scene either, so it didn't bode well. When we reach the Queen Of Angels Cathedral though, this show...

The productions from the Northampton Musical Theatre Company are rarely released gems of fun amounting to a single, maybe two if you are lucky, productions a year. A Slice Of Variety this weekend at the Royal was not a full show production, but an absolute smorgasbord of delights. Predominantly performances of songs from the shows, there was also a bit of dancing, some magic and a couple of genial hosts. Opening the show was a rousing and impressive performance of "Flash Bang Wallop" from Half A Sixpence featuring the full company. It was indeed a curtain raiser for the wonderful two and a half hours of entertainment to come. We were then soon introduced to our first host of the evening (and my favourite) NMTC president Cliff Billing. I enjoyed his appearances more than our later host BBC Northampton's Willy Gilder as his condescending, deadpan delivery had a wonderful charm. Where Mr Gilder was the more professional, I enjoyed the element of randomness and danger from ...

I didn't really get musicals until this year. I had watched a few film versions and did enjoy them, but before Blood Brothers on 26th March this year, I had never seen one live. Since then I have seen five more, one of which was Blitz! ( review here ) by the Northampton Musical Theatre Company, a group formed of amateur performers very much on a level with a professional production. Blitz! was, rather obviously due to my lack of musical knowledge, completely new to me. However these people acting, singing, dancing and in the talented orchestra pit, playing, introduced me to a lovely musical, with catchy tunes. So I was back for more at Royal & Derngate this weekend for their production of Rodgers & Hammerstein's South Pacific. It goes without saying that I have never seen it (not even the film), so once again all was mostly new to me. This time however, unlike Blitz!, some of the tunes were known (in the case of one, thanks to Captain Sensible). The glorious scene w...

I came to Blitz! with zero knowledge of both the musical itself and the amateur group Northampton Musical Theatre Company performing it. It is safe to say that I left after almost three hours pleasantly surprised by both. My live musical theatre viewing had amounted to just two previous, both in the last couple of months and I had been surprised how much I had enjoyed them, despite trepidation at the outset. Likewise my only previous example of an amateur theatre group had been of the Masque Theatre and they had been very good and set a high bar for NMTC to jump over. I have to say, they cleared the bar with sufficient ease, with a quite stunning, polished and enjoyable show. The production was quite simply excellent with hardly a duff note to be heard. I think I would be fair to say that their also wasn't a duff performance amongst them. A few stuck out as being simply excellent, like Susie Pack (nee Lamb) as the loud and brazen Elsie, complete with eye popping swift dress off...