Musical Memories

Keynsham Light Opera Group celebrated their 43 year anniversary with an invitation to an evening of Musical Memories, a huge selection of musical numbers from their previous productions. This was a nice opportunity to hear some songs from rarely performed (these days, at least) shows such as Trial By Jury, Showboat, Brigadoon and The Music Man. However, as the vast majority of the evening was made up with numbers from previous ‘Songs from the Shows’ productions, it did render the concept a little tenuous at times, when this could have been a great opportunity to reward KLOGs long-serving supporters with some old classics, more in the vein of John Cawley reprising Ya Got Trouble from ten years previously. The evening was broken up with video clips – news reports from ten yearly intervals, with national and international events alongside reminders of how KLOG was growing into the company that it is today. This was a nice touch, although some more correlation between the KLOG productions mentioned and those being performed, might have helped to act as introductions to the next sequence of musical numbers, might have made them feel a bit more integral to the evening.

As ever with KLOG compilations, the audience certainly get their money’s worth – 36 numbers over the course of the evening. When you consider that even the biggest shows have at most 20 distinct musical numbers and sequences, it gives you an idea of the challenge that KLOG had set themselves. The sheer logistics of getting through so many numbers in one night did give this a very ‘concert’ feel, which is always a shame for me as the amount of work that has clearly gone into the organisation and preparation, both for the performers and in Lee Tesdale’s musical arrangements, could be channelled into a show, or at least a more structured ‘jukebox musical’, akin to 2009’s Harper Valley Heartbreak Express, as this is clearly a talented company which could cope with more character work. 

There were some good performances – James Sellick’s energetic Sit Down You’re Rockin’ the Boat, Ed Corbishley’s Electricity and Andrew English and Hannah Blay-Field duetting on Suddenly Seymour were the stand out vocal performances, and as ever the chorus were very strong in the company numbers, most notably towards the end of Act Two, through Bridge Over Troubled Waters and One Day More. The costumes were bright and colourful, and the choreography simple and sparse. The cast dealt with their moves well, but there could have been more as many of the performances felt quite static, particularly in some of the chorus numbers, such as the Joseph Medley and Put On Your Sunday Clothes, and some of the musical breaks within solo numbers – quite long sequences with barely any movement

Not for the first time at Saltford Hall, I felt that the cast were hampered by a sound system which is just simply inadequate for Saltford Hall. This is not a volume issue, it was plenty ‘loud’ enough, but a sound quality issue with many of the vocals sounding tinny, and the lyrics in the chorus numbers often unintelligible. Again, this is not a criticism of the performers, but the sound system itself. 

The evening as a whole had lots of nice touches and plenty of good ideas, and it was good to see a mix of old and new faces being given a chance to step into the spotlight. I wish you all the best for your next production of Annie in the New Year.

© NODA CIO. All rights reserved.