A Wymsical Christmas Carol

This year’s Christmas musical entertainment was described as featuring some yuletide favourites from traditional carols, holiday classics right through to some brand-new festival hits – and that was a great way to describe it.

Act 1 consisted of their version of ‘A Christmas Carol’ all in 50 minutes, incorporating elements of Leslie Bricusse’s 1970s musical film, a Broadway musical by Alan Menken & Lynn Ahrens, traditional carols and a dash of Muppet melodies. There were 29 roles in total plus some townsfolk and so I will not attempt to mention them all, although I believe it is fair to include two in particular; the Narrator (Charles Dickens) played by Clara Davies and Scrooge himself played by Eddie Thomas. Clara gave a fresh clear performance whilst Eddie provided a great characterisation from his first entrance through the auditorium and throughout, expressive well- acted and a good clear voice. I really enjoyed both their performances together with many of the others. All were neatly dressed in Dickensian fashion.                        

Clara opened Act 2 leading the team in a tuneful and natural ‘Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas’; girls in ‘posh frocks’ and the lads dressed in black, the picture looked good. Encore upped the tempo with ‘A Kid at Christmas’ and this was followed by Harriet Briggs on piano with an excellent ‘Snow Prelude 3’ by Ludovic Einaudi. The invited guests the Fenice Singers then sang three numbers, the third of which ‘The Snow’ by Elgar with violin accompaniment was particularly enjoyable.

The Debut and Spotlight sections of Wymsical then sang a sweet ‘When Christmas comes to town’, and all the Wymsies sang a poised ‘Christmas Children’ by Bricusse, followed by Isaac McManus who gave a brief but proficient reading ‘Stopping by Woods’ by Robert Frost. Later It was good to see Megan Jones sing ‘Jealous of the Angels’ in her last Wymsical production and pleasing to see how much her confidence had grown.

The Fenice Singers concluded their own contribution with two more numbers including their best I thought, of the traditional  ‘We wish you a merry Christmas’. They joined Wymsical for a moving ‘Silent Night’ and the concert concluded with a couple of carols for all to sing.

I know the Wymsies would acknowledge the help from the Norbury Theatre in staging their shows for which there were some smooth between scene transitions. I would like to thank Wymsical for a broad range of musical entertainment throughout the year and look forward to more in 2023.

© NODA CIO. All rights reserved.