Members Area
Members Area
Weston-super-Mare Operatic Society
St Jude’s Hall
W-s-M.
Saturday 19th August 2017
This year’s ‘blazing’ summer, miserably featuring grey clouds and drizzle interspersed with disturbing news reports of horribly misguided young men driving into crowds of innocent people, needed a ray of sunshine: Weston’s Shout! The Mod Musical provided just that. Colourful, energetic, funny and nostalgic, Phillip George and David Lowenstein’s show takes us through the Sixties via the pages of the young hipsters’ magazine Shout! We see the coming of age of five fashionable young women presented in a series of short, linked vignettes reflecting the changing times and the effects of those times on the individual women. Within each vignette is an evocative hit song from the era: a series of terrific numbers from England Swings to Don’t Sleep in the Subway and from Son of a Preacher Man to Those Were the Days. Presented in colourful sixties-fashion costumes on an attractive sub-psychedelic set, complete with excellent live three-piece band: just the tonic this grim summer needed.
Directors Laura Grace James and Will Taylor showed expert and experienced hands on the tiller: Pace was exquisitely handled, gently slowing for sensitive sections and galloping along for high-energy numbers; Design was very attractive and cleverly realised – I loved the door in Big Ben revealing Gwendolyn Holmes, the horrendous gossip columnist, the stage cubes worked very well indeed and scene transitions were smoothly handled by the cast; Attention to detail was impressive – even down to the adverts for musical theatre shows of the time on the back page of the copies of Shout! and the small TV screen, never over-used, showing an advert for Ectosil. Choreography was exactly right for each number, the small stage was excitingly full when needed, without being overcrowded and the many ‘stage pictures’ presented looked great. It was the subtlety of direction for me that was most impressive: these were Sixties songs in a Sixties setting delivered by Sixties girls but the ‘feel’ of a contemporary, modern show was never lost: great work, both.
A small cast, given very strong musical material in an ‘intimate’ venue tends to expose the slightest weakness in performance. Simply: there’s no place to run to Baby, nowhere to hide. No worries here! This group of talented women blew us away with some tremendous performances. Experience and talent were clear throughout: Mod Girls Jane Morris, Charlotte Gould-Ozanne and Sarah Clitherow looked the epitome of Mod in their black and white minis (very pleasing that, despite all matching in terms of colour, their dresses were individual, reflecting their characters) and they added considerably to the show in song, dance and acting. Alison Boreham’s unpleasant agony-aunt Gwendolyn looked and sounded just right: her po-faced acidity and crisp comic timing worked very well indeed.
The five ‘colour girls’ carried the show with style: Orange Girl elicited our sympathy for the underlying sadness of her situation – very well played (and sung) by the society’s Chairperson, Georgina Barry; Blue Girl played by Stephanie Reeves (a former Oppitt), returning to Weston to slot elegantly into the role of the posh girl questioning her own sexuality; the highly-sexed Green Girl played with her usual sense of fun by Leah Farmer; Red Girl, the Lancastrian ingénue given expert comic timing and the glow of excitement-in-performance by Clare Hunter and the celebrity-obsessed, American Yellow Girl delivered with great believability by Paige Brunton.
Musically this show shone. The three-piece band: Will Taylor on Bass, Andy Davis on drums and percussion and remarkable Musical Director Richard Lennox on keyboard were exemplary. Richard Lennox impresses in every show I have seen him perform and this was no exception: tight, precise control of the band and singers but precisely judged ‘freedom of expression’ for all performers when appropriate. Singing was of the highest order: individual solo pieces were impressive but so too were the seemingly effortless blends of backing-vocal pieces and ensemble numbers.
In a show which is very much a small, tight team-effort I am perhaps unfair in pointing out two stand-out performances for me but……
Yellow Girl, Paige Brunton’s vocals in general and for Son of a Preacher Man, in particular were remarkable – great to see her in a lead role. And Red Girl Clare Hunter was so funny throughout and especially in the Pill sequence that I could not leave her performance unremarked.
I am sure that no one would suggest that Shout! is ever going to push back the boundaries of Musical Theatre: it is a very pleasant juke-box show and little more. This production however was delivered with such well-judged feel, quality and attention to detail that any lack of great profundity, political message or other posturing can be happily forgotten. I grinned from ear-to-ear throughout the show. It was funny, easy on the eye and ear and a lovely way to escape from the nasty world even if it was just for a couple of hours.
Thanks for inviting me