Fame The Musical

Fame the Musical was developed from the film, which was followed by a popular television series. It tells the stories of  students at the New York City’s School of Performing Arts, their interactions with each other and with their teachers. First seen in Florida, the show had its UK premiere in 1995.

This was quite a pleasing production by Spalding-based SADOS.

The storyline is fairly thin, based on the clichéd American idea that everyone can succeed if only they try hard enough – and anyone who doesn’t has to have some sort of personality flaw. But the show has some good songs and plenty of opportunities for dancers, with a nice line in comedy and, of course, romance.

For me the outstanding feature of this production was dance. Not perfect but there was lots of it, generally done very well. Singing was of  mixed quality. There was some good chorus work but solo singing varied from outstandingly good to disappointing. More active assistance from the Musical Director was clearly needed. Acting too, on the third show of a five-show run was at times disappointing – in general it was clear that lines have been well-learnt and diction and accents were good but I got the feeling that several of the actors were never fully ‘in character’.

I was impressed by Samuel Collins as the show’s chief joker, Joe Vegas - he had stage presence aplenty - and Dawson Ashwood was convincing as Nick Piazza, the glamorous boy with a true passion for acting. ‘Lambchops’ Lamb was played by Erin Black who looked totally comfortable in her role and Abbie Schweikhardt was pleasingly sweet as Nick’s admirer. 

Billy Heron as camp ‘Goody’ King, Molly Smith, as ballet girl Iris Kelly, Louis Iddenden-Rhodes as Tyrone (played grumpy rather than frustrated and angry, I thought) and Matilda Hoyles-Simpson as the ever-hungry Mabel Washington, made up the rest of the principal student body.

Slightly older than the rest of the cast but still convincing as a student was Charlie Russell, a talented musician and singer, as Schlomo Metzenbaum. 

But without doubt, Dominique Spinks as Carmen Diaz stole the show. Apart from her acting and dancing ability, Dominique has an extremely good singing voice which, from what I heard, could easily grace the professional stage – her performance of the show’s title song, Fame!, belted out with total confidence, being the highlight of the evening with ‘Bring on Tomorrow’, her duet with Schlomo, also outstanding. 

Of the teachers I was very impressed by Amber Sinclair as Miss Sherman,  her solo, ‘These Are My Children’, powerfully soulful.

The whole was supported by a talented ensemble.

The practical set with plenty of room for movement at the front and a high platform at the back of the stage onto which images could be projected, worked very well, and lighting, with one or two glitches, complemented the show.

A very talented seven-piece band provided the music. That said, I was in the middle of the stalls and the show suffered from the all-too familiar problem of sound balance with some solo voices drowned out by the audience-level musicians. For example, Miss Sherman's speech - which sets the tone for the whole show - was like a competition between her and the band. 

All that said, there are points for improvement here but overall I had a good night out at SADOS’ production of Fame The Musical.

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