Fame Jr

When I heard the theme tune this show took me back to the 1980s, I knew the music and roughly the story line but I had never watched the TV series or seen the film, too busy doing other things.

The 1980s storyline takes place in the High School for the Performing Arts, New York City, the set represented the school and was primarily a three-tier construction allowing the cast to move around the different levels for different scenes, students or teachers being at levels as required for being spoken to or performing to each other as the scenes required. This was slightly hampered by the stairs stage left as this required cast moving both up and down at the same time (also for access there were rear unseen stairs). Use was also made of doors either side of the stage with steps up to the stage, for one scene the floor in front of stage was used, although I couldn’t really see the cast. The stage was well dressed, musical instruments upstage right, a bank of school lockers upstage left, other set pieces brought on as required. Signs were placed throughout the show to indicate the different stages of school life A smart door down stage right represented the main entrance doors into the school building. Lighting was good although the highest level had trouble with the spots fully illuminating the cast positioned there. There were gremlins in the sound system which also had mics coming up late on occasion. Techie Pete said I should have come the previous day!

There was a cast of Fourteen Principals together with Seventeen ensemble members making up music, dance and acting ensembles. Interestingly only seven of the principals had singing roles, they all gave good performances and had interpreted and represented their characters well. There was a good pairing of Dylan and Imogen as respectively Nick Piazza and Serena Katz, this was a good lead role for Dylan and he played the role well, with a good rendition of ‘I want to Make Magic’. I enjoyed the scene ‘Let’s Play a Love Song’ where frustration boils over, both he and Imogen worked well together as a pair and then Imogen gave us very strong vocals, excellent singing with the song ‘Let’s Play a Love Song’. Another good pairing was that of Freya as Carmen Diaz and James as Schlomo Metzenbaum, Freya was a good choice as the diva who was forever dreaming about being a star singing ‘There She Goes!/Fame’. She was well matched and formed a bond with James and they again worked well together with a nicely sung ‘Bring on Tomorrow’, James looked and sounded the part of a music student. The other student character with a song was Mabel Washington performed by Sidney singing ‘Mabel’s Prayer’, this was well sung and she amused the audience with her continued comments about food and being hungry.

Two of the teachers, Georgia as Ms Greta Bell and Lucy as Miss Esther Sherman had an entertaining song with ‘The Teacher’s Argument’, this was well played out between the two of them. Lucy gave a strong performance as Esther the domineering English Teacher whilst Georgia gave a good performance as the dance teacher. We also had Gracie as Mr Sheinkopf and Isabelle as Ms Myers, suitably costumed as school teachers, I enjoyed Jessica’s interpretation of jokey Joe ‘Jose’ Vegas and Sophie as Tyrone Jackson whose dance skills with Amber as Iris Kelly bring a bit of a laughter to the dance class. There were cameos for the school musicians from Jacob as Goodman ‘Goody’ King and Maisie as ‘Grace ‘Lambchops’ Lamb, they both looked the part as typical student band members.

The seventeen members of the ensemble played their parts well as students, be they music, drama or dance, in particular the dance ensemble gave us good routines well performed. It was encouraging to see one boy, Edison, in this ensemble. This must have been an interesting show for the cast to perform, as the scenes were, in some instances very brief and there were particularly quick costume changes towards the end. There was good singing and choreography from the company, some great numbers from ‘Pray’ and ‘Hard Work’ through ‘The Junior Festival’, ‘Graduation’ and the reprise of ‘Bring on Tomorrow’.

This was a lively and well costumed production, nicely in period for 1980’s America and probably had a bit of nostalgia for older members of the production team and audience.

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