Sweet Charity

Sweet Charity tells the story of a dream-filled optimistic girl looking for true love and a better life for herself than being a dance hall hostess. The plot totally revolves round the title character, Charity Hope Valentine, and as she is on stage for most of the show it is a huge and demanding role for an actress to undertake. Alison Doram, as Charity, undoubtedly fulfils these demands giving it her all with such dynamic energy and vivaciousness whilst maintaining Charity’s vulnerability. She is a tremendously talented young lady so natural in her approach and her singing, acting and dancing skills were truly sublime. Alison was more than ably supported by Julie Metcalfe (Nickie) and Sarah Morell  (Helene) both giving passionate, spirited and energetic performances in their roles of Charity’s two main ‘hostess’ friends. Other lead performances were also strong. Dawn Melloy was ideally cast as Ursula, Mike Brobbin was a creditable Vittorio as was Andrew Davie as Herman and Ian Jones was utterly exuberant as the hippy evangelist.Daddy Brubeck. A truly stand-out performance for me, was delivered by Andy Moore as Oscar. He splendidly portrayed both the neuroses and sweetness of the man with whom Charity falls in love, showing great feeling and understanding of the role and the scene in the elevator with Charity was hilariously brilliant. Sweet Charity has a terrific score handled with great gusto by the orchestra and the numerous big song and dance numbers were an outstanding feature of the show. Congratulations must go to Paula Wilson for her innovative, stunning and stylistic choreography which was expertly executed by a truly magnificent line-up of dancers. I noticed a couple of minor slip-ups, one involving ‘water’ and the other ‘shoes’ but I’m sure these would be addressed in subsequent performances. The set was minimalistic with an on-stage orchestra, a nice touch was the side projection keeping the audience informed of events, lighting effects were good and the costumes, particularly those of the dancers, were superb. This production was definitely deserving of a much bigger audience than was in attendance on the first night. 

© NODA CIO. All rights reserved.