The Band

An average, ordinary Wednesday night saw a full house, an audience dancing in their seats and a production that was a million love songs away from average and ordinary. The Band isn’t a story about Take That but features their music; what did surprise me was the depth of the cross generational story about a group of teenage friends who are obsessed with The Band and their journey from boy bands and homework to a middle age shaped by all the curve balls that life has thrown at them. I didn’t expect to have moments where had the house lights come up, I would have had to have sworn I had something in my eye!

This was the first time that this production has been performed by an amateur group and it was in very safe hands with Stone Revellers. The choreography was slick and full use was made of all the cast for scene changes which well executed. There were definitely some first night nerves in evidence in some of the vocals but everyone settled well.

We start in the 90s and there were one or two nice touches from the era on the set. The set was very clever in the way it was used to reflect the different scenes and also employed a projection against the back flat. This was a bit challenging as the stage lights did impact its clarity somewhat but it got the idea across. The plane steps were very well done and the bus scenes were kept simple, allowing the audience to use their imagination which worked well.

Costume and hair were spot on for the era and I had to applaud the cycling shorts and bumbag combo having sported the exact same get up myself back in the day when there was fortunately no social media!

The band were on great form throughout and we got glimpses of them through the set at the scene changes. Sound was good for both the music, vocals and dialogue (a couple of tiny, first night wobbles notwithstanding). But what really is the star of this show is the story, its heart and the excellent portrayal from all the actors involved.

The young teenage friends, Rachel, Zoe, Claire, Heather and Debbie are united by the usual teenage hopes, dreams & tribulations and also by their love of The Band. Fabulous performances by Kath Stanway, Emily Badger, Bethan Stapleton, Charlotte Davies and Emma Wilson, perfectly portraying that teenage certainty that life will go exactly as they plan and that they will also have each other throughout. However, it is The Band, and their determination to see the boys that ultimately leads to tragedy, one that has far reaching consequences for all their life paths. When we meet adult Rachel, Zoe, Claire and Heather the impact of that fateful night becomes apparent. Excellently played by Jen MacEachen, Mandy Guage, Lauren Turner and Ang Whitney, they demonstrated a heartfelt example of how life. doesn’t go to plan but how it’s never to late to reclaim who you are. The scenes with both the young and adult friends were great, great chemistry across the board. The four adult actors didn’t look quite so uniformly the same age as the younger ones, but that’s amateur theatre and it was soon forgotten as they once again embarked on an adventure to see The Band (with a little bit of casual vandalism to a Prague statue along the way!). This lead to one of the best lines in the production (possibly of many productions!), fabulously delivered by Matt Wright as a Czech police officer in response to the aforementioned damage! This was just one of his many appearances in a variety of excellent supporting character parts and rounding out the cast was Rob Davies as Rachel’s loyal but slightly confused fiancé and Rob gave a great performance.

George Harratt, Matt Williams, Brett McIntyre & Joe Mellor played The Boys and despite some first night nerves in evidence with some of the vocals and choreography, they gave us the Take That classics which provided the soundtrack to the story and also gave the impression of a live concert in parts. These are challenging roles as these songs are almost part of the fabric of musical history at this point so quite a responsibility but well executed.

It will be interesting to see if The Band will be selected by more amateur groups moving forwards and I am very happy that my first time of seeing it was a production that was very well done. I am pretty sure the audience would have carried on dancing and singing if the finale had been longer! Could it be magic? They all certainly thought so!

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