Aladdin

Thank you very much for inviting me to your production of Aladdin at Burraton Community Centre.

 

This was my first visit to Page2Stage and as I understand is the first full musical show back after a last minute cancellation of the second set of shows before the lockdown. Page2Stage have had to move locations from their previous venue and this has added a new level of challenge. The new venue does not allow for storage of props and scenery and there is no possibility of leaving the technical equipment such as sound and lighting set up and so every piece of this production must be flat packed and squeezed into the back of the organisers cars and set up for each weekend of the show. On the evening I attended it was a full house and I am aware that tickets for the following day were also in high demand.

 

The venue was a small community centre with a stage and all lighting and sound equipment being provided by the team. This meant the scenery was fairly simple in order to facilitate the transport and setup time for each week of the show. That said, it was effective enough and with the addition of some innovative use of projections at the back of the stage there was plenty to draw the audience’s attention and clearly set the atmosphere. The main scenery items consisted of items such as a large throne, a divider and other items that were manipulated by the cast to move scenes fluidly from one to the next.

 

Costumes were well designed and effective and these were absolutely appropriate with each character having a well fitted costume. My only comment would be that there were a couple of characters wearing quite modern coloured trainers which didn’t match the costume and were slightly distracting to the eye. It would have been nice to see black trainers or character shoes as the costumes otherwise were fantastic.

 

Throughout the production all of the cast could be heard well and lines were projected right to the back of the room. Lead characters also had radio microphones which ensured their songs were placed nicely above the audio track. The ensemble were not mic’d up though they were plenty loud enough projecting their voice well above the tracks.

 

The show was well cast and enabled opportunities for all to shine. Jafar had some excellent characterisation and provided lots of comedy throughout. The Genie also had some great characterisation providing plent of ‘sass’ to her performance. Babkak, Kassim, Omar and Aladdin worked effectively with each other showing a clear friendship that these characters needed.

 

Well done on a lovely production and I look forward to seeing you next time.

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