Scream Queens

I suspect, like most of the audience, that the promotional video clips we had seen seemed to indicate a horror show, so I didn’t really know what to expect. It actually proved to be an entertaining show based around the early lives of six faded horror movie stars, an interesting concept turned into a musical. Their stories were told through song and film. The film clips were all individually filmed and showed an extra from their early film career.

We were presented with six Scream Queens namely Laura Clifton-May as Alexis, Hayley Tabor as Bianca, Amy Power as DeeDee, Jenny Ives as Nadine, Megan Abbott as Richelle and Emily Blake as Tonya. This was an ensemble cast, five of whom led a named musical number with others as listed in the programme, and one with her own number, the other eight numbers were sung either by all or selected named characters. This worked very well and the standard and strength of the singing was very good, although to me the highlights were the vocals of Emily and Amy. They benefitted by having a talented band of three musicians at the rear of the stage who also provided their own entertainment with various hats, masks and props appropriate to the numbers being sung by the cast.

There was not really any need for much of a set, the stage was dressed essentially as a black box with a row of six chairs on which props such as bags could be left, each bag was left with a phone in them so this gave a great comedic effect as the phones rang and each Queen ran to their chair desperately hunting for their phone hoping that it was a director calling to give them a new break, they reacted really well to this, bringing more comedy onto the show. The other major set piece was a cinema screen that dropped down for their individual film to be projected on to. These films displayed the horror of their movie careers, being typical B Movie Horror Films, bringing more comedy than horror, these were all effectively made, directed, filmed and then edited by Ian Gooda. Very well done. The costumes and makeup for both stage and film were appropriate for each persona and featured a range of short dresses/skirts and low cut or revealing tops.

We also had two more characters, Jim Coote as The Man who had great fun dressed as a gorilla and wearing various masks interacting with the six Queens, bringing more comedy to the stage. Lia Baker as The Host a sort of master of ceremonies role and interacting with the audience, Lia brought a sunny disposition to the role.  

This was a different type of show and I rather enjoyed it, so well done to all the cast, band and crew.

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