A Night at the Musicals

This Summer concert by Jarrow MTC hit all the right notes both aesthetically and musically. In her directorial debut Frances Wood brought together a fine selection of musical numbers to be worthy of the title ‘A Night at the Musicals’.

Not only did Frances direct the concert but also performed in two or three of the solo numbers – including my personal favourite ‘Pulled’ from the Addams Family. There were solos from many well known musicals as well as some lesser known ones such as ‘Memphis’, ‘Tick Tick, Boom’ and ‘Dogfight’ (‘Pretty Funny’ - superbly sung by Shaunagh Kelly). The chorus weren’t redundant with seven chorus medleys including ‘We will Rock you’ and a superb ‘Jersey Boys’ medley. The children of the society weren’t overlooked either with a wonderful rendition of ‘When I grow Up’ from ‘Matilda’ followed by a superbly portrayed and performed ‘Naughty’ by Lia Challoner – certainly one to watch for the future.
In a concert with so much talent on display by 15 soloists (all of which excelled) there are two that stick in my memory – ‘Satisfied’ by Lana Wood (accompanied by sister Frances and Luke Carr) for an emotional performance really well delivered; also ‘Ol’ Man River’ by Alan Tomkins which was hilarious as someone in the audience kept heckling him about the ‘political correctness’ of the lyrics so much so that we enjoyed a performance of ‘Senior Citizen, non gender person, River’ and so on. You had to be there!

Of course the singers couldn’t have performed half as well without the musical accompaniment provided by MD Freda Carney with Frederick Hemmer also on keyboards. An enjoyable evening and hopefully good fund-raiser.

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