PETER PAN - A MUSICAL
December 11, 2009
Curve, Leicester, until Saturday, January 23, 2010
WHAT are the things that spring to mind when you think of Peter Pan? The Second Star to the Right, Following the Leader, that naughty little Barbie-doll fairy in a green tutu?
Yep, Disney’s rather hijacked the entire story and cornered the market in iconic imagery and definitive songs. Which makes any attempt at refreshing the century-old tale with modern sensibilities and a new score about as futile as Captain Hook’s efforts to kill Pan himself.
Unfortunately, composer-lyricist Julian Ronnie’s sub-Lloyd Webber tunes and lazy rhyming couplets, together with a limp and unimaginative script by collaborator Paul Miller and director David Taylor, do little to help reclaim JM Barrie’s original magical fantasy.
There’s much to recommend this show, and it’s plain to see where the budget’s been spent. It looks fabulous, with sumptuous sets, backdrops and scenery from designer Simon Higlett, and the choreography by Bill Deamer is always sharp and full of energy.
In the pit, too, the seven-piece band under Chris Newton work Phil Edwards’s orchestrations to their best advantage. But none of it, however hard-working the cast and crew, can make this a silk purse, and Lauren Samuels as a sweet Wendy and Spencer Charles Noll as a feisty, fisticuffing Peter are always fighting an uphill battle.
The pirates come out of it best, with Paul Baker an amusing enough Smee, but when you find yourself looking for bits of the set to admire in a production, you know there’s something wrong at the heart of things.
Director Taylor shows nowhere near enough of a firm hand in pulling things together, and it’s only when the dance numbers get going that there’s any sense of cohesion. Taylor must also share the responsibility for not enough work going into the raw material, which leaves not only the workings of this inside-out venue on display, but also the mechanics of Peter’s so-called flying.
For a show so heavily dependent on all the magic that theatre can muster, it’s in serious need of a liberal sprinkling of fairy dust.
THE OPERA SHOW
September 4, 2009
Kilworth House Theatre, Leicestershire, until September 13, 2009
HAVING had a runaway success with Crazy For You earlier this summer, and with this latest Opera Show already a sell-out in the open-air hotel garden venue of Kilworth House Theatre, owners Celia and Richard Mackay have little to worry about on the commercial front.
Their own production company, To Be Productions, is staging this three-act entertainment under the direction of resident supremo Mitch Sebastian and musical director Matthew Freeman.
And with every visual, aural and technological trick in the book wrung from the evening’s extravaganza, there’s certainly plenty to warm up the otherwise autumnally chilly audiences.
For the purists, there’ll be plenty to moan about too, with pre-recorded click tracks supplementing the live eight-piece orchestra and some wacky costumes and scenery adding diversions or distractions, depending on your point of view. This is unashamedly opera for the YouTube generation.
Four soloists voice a wide array of operatic arias, from Purcell to Puccini, in three diverse acts nominally, if bemusingly, assembled under the headings Baroque Beginners, The Recording Revolutions and Electronic Evolution. Among these voices, soprano Anna-Clare Monk and tenor Amar Muchhala excel, with quality performances confidently on top of their material.
Alongside the singers, five dancers are given weird and occasionally completely impenetrable things to do to help things along. Of these, only the second act – in which a 1940s Madrid homestead is evoked to the strains of a simulated radio broadcast – really hangs together properly, although elsewhere the dressings and visual knick-knacks prove impressive at times.
There are some stunning moments, among them Dido’s Lament and Song to the Moon, but it’s interesting that the most powerful musically are those with the least visual accompaniment. It’s as if Sebastian can’t quite convince himself that the arias are enough in themselves, so the whole artists’ toolbox, from video projections to electric guitar solos, is splashed about on the Kilworth canvas with varying degrees of success.
A global tour of the show follows its premiere in the Leicestershire countryside. Goodness knows what the rest of the world will make of it.
CRAZY FOR YOU
June 11, 2009
Kilworth House Theatre, Leicestershire, until July 5, 2009
IT’S impossible to review a production at Kilworth House Theatre without taking into account the extraordinary context.
Opened in 2007 in the grounds of a luxury country house hotel, the venue is a well-appointed, beautifully designed open-air theatre nestled among the trees in a woody glade. However, although the auditorium is covered only by a vaulted, tent-like canopy and the lack of walls allows a chill breeze to blow through, the term “open-air” implies a temporariness that really doesn’t apply to this wonderful whim of the property’s owner, Celia Mackay.
With a necessarily short season limited by the weather, she has put together programmes that have so far included star circuit names such as Ken Dodd and Elkie Brooks, with a full in-house production at the heart of the schedule. And in two short years, it’s really made its mark.
This summer, the glade is jumping to the sounds of George and Ira Gershwin and the posthumously manufactured show Crazy For You, which started life almost 80 years ago as Girl Crazy. Reinvented for Broadway in 1992 with a witty new book by Ken Ludwig, it’s crammed with endlessly hummable tunes and a rollercoaster fun ride of a story about a wealthy New Yorker sent to Nevada to close a crumbling hick theatre.
Kilworth House has formed a partnership entitled To Be Productions, using the considerable talents of West End director Mitch Sebastian, and he helms this show with style and bags of energy. With a 12-piece pit band at his disposal, musical director Matthew Freeman wrings a dazzling soundscape out of the thumping score, and the entire creative team – sound, lights, set and costume – come up trumps with a production that looks every bit the professional barnstormer.
Among the huge cast, there are charming performances from the young leads, Cassidy Janson and Mark Stanford, but it’s among the character parts that the show-stealing turns lie in wait. Michael Howe is a finely comic New York impresario with a fondness for the bottle, Cameron Jack a twinklingly villainous baddie, and there’s a whole chorus line of cowboys and showgirls with enough song-and-dance talent to shake stages far more established than this one.
Celia Mackay’s stated aim is to create “a production which will send you home with a spring in your step”. Chilled bones notwithstanding, this vibrant, exciting, delightful show unquestionably fits that bill.
December 11, 2009
Curve, Leicester, until Saturday, January 23, 2010
WHAT are the things that spring to mind when you think of Peter Pan? The Second Star to the Right, Following the Leader, that naughty little Barbie-doll fairy in a green tutu?
Yep, Disney’s rather hijacked the entire story and cornered the market in iconic imagery and definitive songs. Which makes any attempt at refreshing the century-old tale with modern sensibilities and a new score about as futile as Captain Hook’s efforts to kill Pan himself.
Unfortunately, composer-lyricist Julian Ronnie’s sub-Lloyd Webber tunes and lazy rhyming couplets, together with a limp and unimaginative script by collaborator Paul Miller and director David Taylor, do little to help reclaim JM Barrie’s original magical fantasy.
There’s much to recommend this show, and it’s plain to see where the budget’s been spent. It looks fabulous, with sumptuous sets, backdrops and scenery from designer Simon Higlett, and the choreography by Bill Deamer is always sharp and full of energy.
In the pit, too, the seven-piece band under Chris Newton work Phil Edwards’s orchestrations to their best advantage. But none of it, however hard-working the cast and crew, can make this a silk purse, and Lauren Samuels as a sweet Wendy and Spencer Charles Noll as a feisty, fisticuffing Peter are always fighting an uphill battle.
The pirates come out of it best, with Paul Baker an amusing enough Smee, but when you find yourself looking for bits of the set to admire in a production, you know there’s something wrong at the heart of things.
Director Taylor shows nowhere near enough of a firm hand in pulling things together, and it’s only when the dance numbers get going that there’s any sense of cohesion. Taylor must also share the responsibility for not enough work going into the raw material, which leaves not only the workings of this inside-out venue on display, but also the mechanics of Peter’s so-called flying.
For a show so heavily dependent on all the magic that theatre can muster, it’s in serious need of a liberal sprinkling of fairy dust.
THE OPERA SHOW
September 4, 2009
Kilworth House Theatre, Leicestershire, until September 13, 2009
HAVING had a runaway success with Crazy For You earlier this summer, and with this latest Opera Show already a sell-out in the open-air hotel garden venue of Kilworth House Theatre, owners Celia and Richard Mackay have little to worry about on the commercial front.
Their own production company, To Be Productions, is staging this three-act entertainment under the direction of resident supremo Mitch Sebastian and musical director Matthew Freeman.
And with every visual, aural and technological trick in the book wrung from the evening’s extravaganza, there’s certainly plenty to warm up the otherwise autumnally chilly audiences.
For the purists, there’ll be plenty to moan about too, with pre-recorded click tracks supplementing the live eight-piece orchestra and some wacky costumes and scenery adding diversions or distractions, depending on your point of view. This is unashamedly opera for the YouTube generation.
Four soloists voice a wide array of operatic arias, from Purcell to Puccini, in three diverse acts nominally, if bemusingly, assembled under the headings Baroque Beginners, The Recording Revolutions and Electronic Evolution. Among these voices, soprano Anna-Clare Monk and tenor Amar Muchhala excel, with quality performances confidently on top of their material.
Alongside the singers, five dancers are given weird and occasionally completely impenetrable things to do to help things along. Of these, only the second act – in which a 1940s Madrid homestead is evoked to the strains of a simulated radio broadcast – really hangs together properly, although elsewhere the dressings and visual knick-knacks prove impressive at times.
There are some stunning moments, among them Dido’s Lament and Song to the Moon, but it’s interesting that the most powerful musically are those with the least visual accompaniment. It’s as if Sebastian can’t quite convince himself that the arias are enough in themselves, so the whole artists’ toolbox, from video projections to electric guitar solos, is splashed about on the Kilworth canvas with varying degrees of success.
A global tour of the show follows its premiere in the Leicestershire countryside. Goodness knows what the rest of the world will make of it.
CRAZY FOR YOU
June 11, 2009
Kilworth House Theatre, Leicestershire, until July 5, 2009
IT’S impossible to review a production at Kilworth House Theatre without taking into account the extraordinary context.
Opened in 2007 in the grounds of a luxury country house hotel, the venue is a well-appointed, beautifully designed open-air theatre nestled among the trees in a woody glade. However, although the auditorium is covered only by a vaulted, tent-like canopy and the lack of walls allows a chill breeze to blow through, the term “open-air” implies a temporariness that really doesn’t apply to this wonderful whim of the property’s owner, Celia Mackay.
With a necessarily short season limited by the weather, she has put together programmes that have so far included star circuit names such as Ken Dodd and Elkie Brooks, with a full in-house production at the heart of the schedule. And in two short years, it’s really made its mark.
This summer, the glade is jumping to the sounds of George and Ira Gershwin and the posthumously manufactured show Crazy For You, which started life almost 80 years ago as Girl Crazy. Reinvented for Broadway in 1992 with a witty new book by Ken Ludwig, it’s crammed with endlessly hummable tunes and a rollercoaster fun ride of a story about a wealthy New Yorker sent to Nevada to close a crumbling hick theatre.
Kilworth House has formed a partnership entitled To Be Productions, using the considerable talents of West End director Mitch Sebastian, and he helms this show with style and bags of energy. With a 12-piece pit band at his disposal, musical director Matthew Freeman wrings a dazzling soundscape out of the thumping score, and the entire creative team – sound, lights, set and costume – come up trumps with a production that looks every bit the professional barnstormer.
Among the huge cast, there are charming performances from the young leads, Cassidy Janson and Mark Stanford, but it’s among the character parts that the show-stealing turns lie in wait. Michael Howe is a finely comic New York impresario with a fondness for the bottle, Cameron Jack a twinklingly villainous baddie, and there’s a whole chorus line of cowboys and showgirls with enough song-and-dance talent to shake stages far more established than this one.
Celia Mackay’s stated aim is to create “a production which will send you home with a spring in your step”. Chilled bones notwithstanding, this vibrant, exciting, delightful show unquestionably fits that bill.
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