James and the Giant Peach

What a great afternoon we had watching “Chorley Youth Theatre’s” outstanding production of David Wood’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s well loved story “James and the Giant Peach”. The production team Included Directors Alice Charnley and Lucas Burns with Producers Hannah Borer and Amber Hampton, who organised and steered all the talented cast towards producing very entertaining mature performances, with excellent acting and lovely characterisations. They worked together as a team with no weak links and supported each other through the play, they also had good clear diction with good projection and the delivery of dialogue was excellent, which meant the audience which was made up of people from all age groups could follow the story and the well paced action easily.  The cast included Charlie Kemp in the important central role of James with Eva Bromilow and Liesl Cook as his cruel and selfish guardians Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker respectively. They treat James very badly, forcing him to work all day by using threats. Then one day James meets a mysterious stranger who gives James a bag of magic green "Crocodile tongues”, but he is warned he must be careful with them. On his way home James spills the crocodile tongues onto a barren peach tree, which then produces a peach that quickly grows to the size of a house.  The Aunts decided to make the peach a tourist attraction, but James is not allowed near the tourist. At night he goes outside to take a closer look at the peach, and discovers a tunnel, which leads to a secret room inside the peach's seed, which is  inhabited by human-sized, talking invertebrates, who become his friends, and help him escape from his cruel Aunts and accompany him on his adventure to America to fulfil his dream of seeing the Empire State Building and New York. These friends were Miss Spider- Naomi Cook, Centipede -Zach Eccleston, Ladybird- Gemma Essery, Earthworm- Eadie Gosling and Old Green Grasshopper- Leigh Palmer. Other roles included, Mr Trotter- Joe Harrison and Mrs Trotter -Macy Bromilow, with Evie Staniforth as the Tour Guid, Emma Manley as the old women, Jess Bell as the TV Reporter,Rachel Moran as the Captain of the Queen Mary, Ellie Brookfield as the 1st Officer and Libby Smith- Hughes as the 2nd Officer. The actors in the named roles were supported by an enthusiastic ensemble who produced some nice characters and appeared  to be very much engaged with the all action.

Scenery was mainly made up of an excellently constructed giant Peach situated in the centre of the stage which swivelled around to show its inside as well as the outside for different scenes . Other scenes were set with the use of very good props and the actors used a lectern occasionally to narrate the story which kept the audience up to date with the action. There was also a large orange balloon which looked like the peach that bounced around the audience causing lots of excitement from the children, this all worked very well and along with very good technical input and superb colourful costumes helped to make this show a great success. I have said this before that the input of all the backstage crew, set builders, Props, technicians, wardrobe and makeup should never be under estimated.

 Congratulations to the production team and all members of “Chorley Youth Theatre”, who take on all the responsibility for all aspects of their productions and to all involved in bringing this outstanding play to the stage.

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