A Small Mind At The Theatre

I arrived at St Peter's Church for Looking Glass Theatre's Sleeping Beauty slightly jaded and apprehensive for my third pantomime of the season. However I always love to support this little theatre and this years show had the bonus of having a quartet of those magnificent University of Northampton students that I get great pleasure in also supporting. The four on this occasion were Matt Larsson, Tara Lawrence, Nikki Murray, Ashley Thomas Sopher and they made a quite excellent and youthful quartet and showed surprising skills in the challenging art of pantomime (no doubt very useful to have on the CV). Tara held the obvious affinity for working with children following her Flash Festival success the children's storytelling show and she has that quietly gentle style that offers no menace. Here she was once again joyful and even as a baddie in the second act remained playful. Ashley was quite a revelation as the dame of the show, playing up the part with glee and doing everyt...

On my first Theatreversary I attended the Royal & Derngate for the Northamptonshire Music And Performing Arts Trusts (NMPAT) performance of An Orchestra Spectacular. It was my first encounter with a live orchestra of such a size, and its safe to say it was quite devastating on me as a night. The evening was formed of three different orchestras, from the youth beginners (still quite brilliant), to the so called "training orchestra" and then finally after the interval the full "youth orchestra". The difference was noticeable between the three, but none were very short of excellent. Many of the pieces were familiar to me and would very much be high on my choice of selections if I were to make a list of classical music. There were also too superb diversions from classical type with a medley of John Williams' (music god) Empire Strikes Back and video game theme from The Bounty Hunter. Our host of the evening assured us that computer game music is where much o...