The Boyfriend

For their 40th Anniversary production, the committee of the BSMTC Juniors had chosen Sandy Wilson's much-loved musical comedy "The Boyfriend", giving their talented young people the opportunity to perform songs and dances from the era of the swinging 1920's.

Cath Dickerson, as Director, with her many years experience as both a performer and director with the company and Elsa Springham as Choreographer, herself a former member of the Juniors, had worked tirelessly in encouraging and rehearsing their young cast, whose performance was full of fun, vitality and obvious enjoyment.  The pace was relentless and carried the audience along on this fantasy journey of young love and promises, set against the backdrop of the 1920's French Riviera.

Madame Dubonnet's Finishing School, the Villa Caprice, is where we first meet the main characters.  Lydia McGrath, as the maid "Hortense", put in a good, solid performance, maintaining her French accent throughout.  Katie Ellams as the central character "Polly Browne", with her lovely clear voice, was convincing as the reluctant heiress, whose one wish was to find a boyfriend who was not a fortune-hunter.  Her wish comes true in the form of "Tony Brockhurst", masquerading as a messenger-boy, well-played by Sam Jackson.  Their duets "I Could Be Happy With You" and "A Room In Bloomsbury" were particularly enjoyable.

Maddie Shannon shone as "Madame Dubonnet".  Her poise and confidence in the role and beautiful, mature singing voice belied her age.  It was such a shame that there seemed to be an intermittent problem with her radio mic.  Alex Stevens as "Polly's" father "Percival Browne", acted his part well as the unbending British millionaire, suddenly re-united with his "old flame", their musical numbers "Fancy Forgetting" and "The 'You-Don't-Want-To-Play-With-Me' Blues" very well choreographed.  Other delightful comedy touches came from Tom Dickerson as womanising "Lord Brockhurst" and his long-suffering wife "Lady Brockhurst", well-played by Amelia Moss.  Good, confident, supporting role performances, too, from Phoebe Duffy ("Maisie"), Rob Connor ("Bobby Van Husen"), Georgina Jackson ("Dulcie"), Abby Springham ("Fay") and Bathsheba Tingey ("Nancy").  The dancing girls and boys and girls of the chorus all added their part to the quality of the performance, although the boys, at times, seemed less confident in their dancing abilities.

Simple stage settings and colourful 1920's costumes helped to enhance the overall performance by this talented young group.  My one disappointment was the musical accompaniment.  Whilst I acknowledge the obvious talent of Russ Pinder as a professional keyboard musician, I felt that the brassy and tinny "celeste" style used as the backing for such great musical numbers was inappropriate and too loud at times.  In these days of escalating costs of productions for local musical theatre, some savings have to be made and the younger generation are more used to performing to backing tracks and other musical devices in place of live bands.  On this occasion, however, I felt it detracted from an otherwise fine performance. 

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