Aladdin Jr.

So here we were on a warm night in July, though not thankfully quite as hot as it has been, watching a musical by the Yellow cast of the five to seven year group of Castle Newnham School’s excellent 4Sixteen Theatre Company. This was apparently a rescheduling dating back to 2020 when the pandemic put a stop to all activity. The show, scheduled to run for the week has two casts, Blue and Yellow and has a cast of over fifty in each group including a strong Ensemble of over thirty. We saw the opening night for the Yellow team.

The set, by the director Tara Hutchings was the floor of the intimate studio theatre, with the audience seated lengthways on two sides. To one end was a staircase leading to a rather well-made Arabian style balustrade and the other end a raised carpeted area. Sound was by Emily Green and Jack Serino and I have to say I take my hat of them for having nothing more than the odd blip with so many face mics in play. Lighting, as usual was by the very experienced year 10 student, Ben Cronin who for this production operated everything manually because of a technical problem. As per usual, a pretty faultless performance.

Costumes, which were quite spectacular for many of the main cast, such as the Sultan, Aladdin as the Prince, Jasmine and the Genie, and a huge variety of colourful street clothing for the ensemble were all sourced under the control of the Director, as indeed were the props.

The cast were very enthusiastic, especially the ensemble who, whilst seemingly taking up the entire stage, somehow managed some complicated manoeuvres without getting in each other way. They burst onto the stage with a spectacular opening number, Arabian Nights and those in the front row of the audience had been well warned to keep their feet tucked in. We certainly needed to!

Hats off to Choreographers, Daniella Reynolds and Sophie Kelk for the spectacularly fast manoeuvres on a crowded stage, particularly the impressive dance with the veils around Aladdin and Jasmine.

The four main characters were very well suited to their parts. Nicholas Wensley as Aladdin was the street urchin, cheeky chappy with a permanent smile on his face and happy go lucky attitude. Aiya El-Koum was every inch the rebellious princess, Jasmine and Annabel Goodbody, who has stage presence in spades and a singing voice to match was in total control of the stage as a very dominant Genie and Harvee Liburd, complete with imposing staff made full use of his stature to bring the evil Jafar to life. I look forward to following the careers of these four as they progress through their year groups.

They were well backed up by their various sidekicks. Aladdin’s three best buddies Babkak (Rosalind Malt), Omar (James Leask) and Kasim (Leah Francis) put up a particularly good sword fight against Jafar and his henchmen.  And I loved Violet Copland as Iago who as Jafar’s evil sidekick actually had more of a good comic touch. Jasmine’s three sidekicks. Isir (Annalise Reveglia), Manal (Amelia Cockings) and Rajah (Romy Schneider) suitably giggled their way through helping their friend to choose a suitor by the end of the day. Ably supported by handmaidens Mya Fitzharris and Erin Horgan.

Oscar Sun as the Sultan, gave us a wonderfully frustrated father trying to marry off his daughter who was having none of it, as amply demonstrated by a lovely little cameo of potential suitor Prince Abdullah, played very forcefully by Christofer Modafferi. ‘They told me she was very obedient!’ venomously spat out as he stormed off stage is still ringing in my ears and the Sultan’s reply of, ‘She is very charming,’ produced one of the best laughs of the night. Great stuff!

Jesse Linton-Walls was the evil head guard, Razoul keeping Aladdin and his friends in jail supported by Harry Trewby, Mason How and Cemo Erkan Boyd as his henchmen.

Some of the Musical numbers, under the direction of Emily Green and Jack Serino were also quite spectacular, especially the choral numbers such as Arabian Nights and One Jump Ahead. But the outstanding voice has to belong to our Genie, Annabel Goodbody, a definite talent for musical theatre to keep an eye on. Confidence personified with the personality to fully engage the audience. My favourite number was definitely her rendition of ‘Friend Like Me.’

So well done indeed to Tara Hutchings and her cast and crew, another triumph. One or two little glitches and missing lines, well covered by the cast, but it was the first night and after four run throughs in the day, enough to test the stamina of any seasoned professional, the level of commitment, concentration and enthusiasm was particularly outstanding.

As Luke Skeel, the man behind the rise and rise of 4Sixteen and now promoted to an Assistant Principal role at the school, said, you have the best teachers and the best pupils. When it comes to performing arts, I’m not going to argue with that!

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