It's Time For A Musical

A fabulous evening’s entertainment with this homegrown revue cleverly pulled together on a time travelling theme.  Ashley Booker, Jonathan Wilby, Louise Seldon and Kirstie Turnball created a format to showcase a range of popular and well-known songs from musicals.   The master of ceremonies was the time-travelling Doctor Who (Tom Baker – the real one) convincingly played by Steve Bail who wrote his own narrative to take the audience, seated cabaret style, through the ages where the musicals were set.

The finale of Act 1 was ‘Thoroughly Modern Millie’ with Daisy Mikulik taking the title role – this young woman is a superb performer with a lovely voice and fabulous stage presence.  She was supported by the whole company with the dancers being particularly strong in this routine.  The choreography was great throughout and well suited to the songs and performers. I found ‘Greased Lightening’ to be hugely entertaining and I was impressed by the ability of the gentleman to perform this and other routines.  ‘Welcome to the 60s’ brought a huge smile to my face and again the featured performers did very well in presenting this for the enthusiastic audience.

Johnny Green and Catherine Enos led the company with a very funny rendition of ‘Master of The House’ - a great platform for all the cast to demonstrate their abilities to perform as characters which they did with great aplomb and much hilarity.   In contrast the rousing ‘You Will Be Found’ was beautifully performed by the company and was a particularly emotional moment in the show for me.

The Students Academy were included in some numbers and ably held their own in their dedicated routines, particularly in ‘Castle On A Cloud’ – which I was surprised to learn they sang without personal mics – great voices, lovely stage presence and very entertaining.  Well done Emily, Isabelle, Faith, Keira and Ruby – this writer very much looks forward to seeing you all in future productions.   It also says a lot about DOS that the children were placed front and centre at the end, where they enjoyed the final routine and dance-off.

The stage was clear of props with just a star curtain, great lighting and strong sound to enhance the production.  However, there was a very fabulous TARDIS created by John Green, Mark Wareing and Paul Raymond along with a super, remote controlled K-9 – excellent in-house work gentlemen.

The shows format gave everyone involved the opportunity to take centre stage and the range of musical numbers played to the strengths of the versatile cast.  The Director was Ashley Booker who was assisted by Louise Seldon, Kirstie Turnball as Choreographer and with Jonathan Wilby as Musical Director – this Production Team worked with the performers to produce a thoroughly entertaining evening to celebrate being back in the theatre, out of the darkness of lockdown and with a bright future ahead.

Congratulations to everyone involved – an uplifting evening which was enjoyed by the audience and clearly enjoyed by the performers.

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