Brigadoon

Now and then it’s good to see an older show and to be reminded that many of them contain some lovely music.  Lerner and Loewe’s Brigadoon is one such show and all credit to the society for taking on the challenges it contains and for attracting good audiences.  Tommy Albright and Jeff Douglas from New York are on holiday in the Scottish Highlands and stumble across the mythical village of Brigadoon that appears once every hundred years.

Tommy, already engaged to Jane back home, immediately falls for Fiona MacKeith and Jeff is pursued by Meg Brockie.  Fiona’s sister, Jean, is about to marry Charlie Cameron, much to the annoyance of Harry Ritchie, who threatens to leave the village thus bringing an end to the magic and making the village disappear.

John Allanach and Lara McLeod were a very good pairing as Tommy and Fiona and some of their scenes together were very moving as was ‘The Heather on the Hill’.  As Jeff, Dave Duffill extracted all the comedy he could from the character and he was well supported by Maggie Davies as a very lively Meg, her ‘The Love of My Life’ being very entertaining.

Rick Windley threw himself into the role of Charlie and I also liked Richard Mainprize who was a strong Andrew MacKeith, Fiona’s father. There was another powerful performance by Graham Beeston as Mr Murdoch, the Dominie.  This is a very wordy part, with most of it coming in one scene, and he held his accent very well.  I enjoyed Bethany Sanderson as Jean and Sebastian Carvill-Belt as Harry.

The society is not alone in having very few men, making a show like this pretty difficult for the Director, however their small group here worked very hard.

Staging was fine and very good use was made of the big screen at the back of the stage which I was seeing for the first time in full use – very impressive and it added to the emotion towards the end of the show.

Musical accompaniment was excellent on keyboard and costumes, lighting and sound were in keeping with the fairy tale mood.

This was a nice evening.

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