Austin Powers & The Tufted Shagpile!

Complete with an original narrative, Stage Squad present this revue show which adopts characters and influences from all things and anything 1960s with Austin Powers (a comedy favourite for many after hitting our screens in the 90’s as one of many 1960’s parody influences of James Bond) as the focus of the central plot.

Director and devisor of the piece, Sean Kennedy, has quite cleverly woven together as many influences as possible in celebration of the flower power era.

The selection of songs presented throughout the revue was a clever mix of titles, not only using songs from the decade but also musical numbers from Broadway shows too which are either set in or have a link to the 1960s but which, more importantly, relate to the plot of this revue with only the occasional lyric being tweaked to in keep with this story.  

Now in my fifth year as the NODA representative for district # 1, this venue of choice (The Hough End Centre) is the second time I’ve attended a production staged in a social club which I find to be quite inspiring. With community theatres closing throughout the north west region and costs of hiring theatres becoming increasingly higher, some amateur societies are finding it a tremendous struggle to find venues to cost effectively host productions but one thing we’re not short of in the region is social clubs. For some people/societies, at first thought, it may seem a garish suggestion or even distasteful but depending on the style of show – especially with Juke Box musicals being quite the rage at the moment – Stage Squad has proved it can work rather well.

My personal highlight of the evening was the Act I finale which sees Dr Evil come face-to-face with the greatest villain of all time, Adolph Hitler (but not quite as we all know of him – unless you’re familiar with ‘The Producers’ by Mel Brooks of course). The number ‘Springtime For Hitler’ was performed as a lavish finale to the first act which is from the musical version of ‘The Producers’ - which is the musical of the film of the same name which was released in 1960! – The number was a visual spectacle being the evenings climax for choreography and vocal entertainment.

Presenting new writing is not easy, the masters at the top of their craft spend weeks workshopping and later tweaking their work during previews before an opening performance to critics. Here, Stage Squad only had one performance to present this original work so being overly detailed and constructive on the script would be a little unfair but bearing these comments in mind, some chunks of dialogue were quite long and it didn’t help that the pace of the delivery was rather slow – particularly during the Fatman and Wobblin’ (a Batman & Robin spoof) and the Thunderbirds scenes. The flair of the script was prominent and unashamedly exposed the parody and the storyline very clearly which is not only highly commendable for not over complicating things but delivered with accuracy what an audience needs to latch on to for the journey of the piece. The skill set to be able to produce original work is terrific and one which should be nurtured and exposed.     

Technically we were presented with far more than what you’d expect from a one night only performance - packed with sound effects (some of which were quite tricky to time) as well as a detailed lighting plot for a show of this nature. I admire and appreciate that short cuts and easy options had not been taken on this front.

The main factor of the evening was simple; fun! …and we got it in spades with outrageous costumes, mad gags, lively numbers and plenty of colourful holographic and floral patterns. Some of the singing quality was not as beneficial to the presentation as other factors were and I really do advise / recommend the appointment of a musical director for your future productions to nurture and expose the voices you have amongst your players to their full potential.

© NODA CIO. All rights reserved.