Boogie Nights

This most versatile company is never afraid of tackling something different and the decision to stage ‘Boogie Nights’ was an excellent choice. The fairly thin storyline following Roddy’s dreams and the frailties of relationships in adolescence in the 70’s is in the main amusing yet the conclusion is very touching and moving. The plot is neatly held together by very familiar musical hits of the 70’s.

The ‘prologue’ delivered by Ruby Rose (Hazel Beattie) as a stand up comedienne immediately created the atmosphere of entering the disco. This may have been scripted to a degree but her witty, spontaneous comments to the audience as they took their seats were very clever and got the evening off to a great start. A very strong principal line up fulfilled their roles convincingly and sang brilliantly. Magnus Holvold was well cast as the ladies man Roddy who dreamed of becoming a rock star. Despite his bravado, he earned our sympathy when he lost the lovely Debs (Jennifer Good) to his friend Dean (Andrew Todman). Debs numbers ‘I Will Survive’ and ‘Yesterday Once More’ were sung with great emotion the latter sounding not unlike Karen Carpenter. Nicole Graham as Trish gave a quirky, animated performance ‘ I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trouper’ suiting her very well vocally. David Docherty too was in fine form as Terry no more so than in his scene in the cinema which was hilarious and I’m sure brought back memories to those of such an age. Kenneth Pinkerton gave a strong performance as Spencer the night club owner demonstrating some fine footwork in ‘You Sexy Thing’ and ‘CYMA’ while his flirtatious girlfriend Lorraine ( Josephine Heinemeier) gave an engaging performance and was vocally outstanding. Indeed all of the main characters were impressive and very accomplished.

Apart from this strong set of principal characters this entire company is to be congratulated for their virtually non stop singing and dancing which was bursting with energy. The choreography was superb and the cast appeared flawless in their presentation. Everything had been so well rehearsed and so well timed from feet to fingers. The hand jive ‘Happy Days’ was terrific. All of the numbers were delivered with precision.

The seamless transition of changing scenes was flowing and well managed by the cast .This was a first class production with skilful and subtle direction from a director making his debut with EMT. I liked his use of freezing for moments portraying different thoughts and the clever action behind scenes which never distracted from what was happening out front. The Disco’s Hour Band remained on stage throughout but were never intrusive of the action.This was a show with a real feel good factor which had the audience buzzing and showing an obvious eagerness to join in. I’m certain their Sing A Long performance will have been an absolute knockout.

This extremely talented and skilled company once again delivered a wonderful show which was worthy of the audience’s enthusiastic applause.

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