Our House

So, here is the dilemma, what do you do to impress the girl of your dreams on your sixteenth birthday? Well if you are Joe Casey, the hero of ‘Our House’, you finish a massive energetic and fantastic dance routine and then break into a building site overlooking your family home. Obvious really! Not only is this a ‘sure-fire’ way to impress the girl, it is also not a bad way to start a very entertaining musical. After breaking into the building site Joe has two choices, stay and fess up to the police or scarper leaving the girl of his dreams to take the blame. It’s at this point that the story splits into two (A-la Sliding Doors), to show the audience the outcomes of both of these decisions, whilst also taking in a wide variety of locations including Casey Street; Joes family home; the local; Mister Pressman’s Office and many more. It is in the depicting of these different locations, and in showing the different path Joes life takes, that this production showed some incredibly clever innovation. The set was made of a wall and three doors and this set up, including a couple of flats at the front of the stage, made up every location. This was “simply” achieved by turning the doors around, a black door to represent ‘bad’ Joe and a white door to represent the ‘good’ Joe. This in itself was clever but all of a sudden the doors were also Joe’s Front Door; A Prison Cell and a Construction Office, all within a blink of an eye. This was incredibly impressive and must have taken so much preparation and planning to get right, however the results were there on stage for all to see and it really elevated this production to great heights. 

As previously mentioned, the production began with an energetic dance to the song 'Our House'. Every song in this production had great choreography and Tina Eyers came up with some incredibly energetic moves, especially pleasing was the inclusion of the ‘Madness – Fist Dance’. Dance highlights were 'Our House'; the hand jiving to 'Wings of a Dove' and pretty much all the chorus dancing. Although there were a few occasions that Tris Hann as Joe, was seemingly doing slightly different moves to everyone else, he did it with such confidence and enthusiasm, that I don’t think anyone cared and all the dance moves looked great fun to do, if not more than a little tiring.

The band, under the musical direction of Sheila Ross, played well and didn’t seem to put a note out of place. Their volume was also perfect throughout the production, not overpowering the singers and not too quiet to hear. This may seem such a simple thing but it is surprising how many productions have not got this level right recently.

The lighting for this production was good and was used very well. I was especially impressed how the lighting changed between good and bad Joe’s story, the good was a lot brighter and, with the coloured doors, really helped set the scene. The props were good especially the car for 'I Like Driving in my Car', this scene was very funny and quite clever with the use of the backdrop.

Clothes and make-up were good, and using the different colours of clothes to represent either bad or good Joe was a clever idea. The costumes in the market scene, where everyone was dressed as either a pearly king or queen showed what hard work Chantelle Mitchell and her team had put in, as every costume looked spot on. However, it was confusing that there was just one chorus member in this scene not dressed as a pearly King or Queen! Make-up was also good and no one stood out as looking over made.

The chorus in this production worked really well together and all of them looked like they were having a great time, this is always good to see and I am convinced it helps the audience enjoy the production more. There were a couple of chorus members, who really impressed on the night but unfortunately without named pictures in the programme it is hard to give them the credit they deserve, which is a real shame.

With any production the casting of the main principles is obviously very important, these are the people your audience need to believe in; root for and even hate. Therefore, Gerald Eyers, must have been thanking his lucky stars with this lot. Everyone of the main principles played their parts well, Paul Brice delivered a good deal of emotion as Joe’s Dad and some of his scenes were truly touching, Paul struggled a little with some of the songs but certainly counterbalanced this with plenty of enthusiasm. Ben Davis; Ken Edmonds and Nick Barlow (as Emmo; Lewis and Reecey respectively) offered strong characterisations of Joe’s friends/allies/enemies, Nick Barlow especially had a very strong singing voice and was, at times, very intimidating as Reecey. On a slightly negative note, I did find Emmo’s hammy characterisation somewhat irritating at times, but I am sure this is more down to Emmo’s characteristics than Ben’s portrayal. Like Paul, Niamh McGrogan managed to pack a lot of emotional clout into her portrayal of Kath (Joe’s Mum). Niamh also had a beautiful singing voice and a strong stage presence. Nicky Hann was well cast and very believable as Sarah, she too had a lovely singing voice but she also seemed to struggle a little in some of the songs Alisa Creaser and Sandra Marshall were fantastic as Billie and Angie, these two produced many of the highlights of the show as Sarah’s bitchy friends. They were nasty and mean but also incredibly funny. These two ladies worked really well together and bounced off each other well, clearly they were having the time of their lives. Rounding off the principle cast was Tris Hann as Joe Casey. Tris did not actually play Joe, he was Joe and if ever someone was born for a role this was it. Tris was just superb and gave a truly West End quality performance, which easily got the audience on his side from the first moment he was on stage.

This was an incredibly impressive production to watch. Lots of amazing innovation in the set design tied with some of the best performances I have seen in an amateur production came together to create a production that will be remembered for a long time to come. Well done Wells. 

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