The Diamond Years

Choreographer: Kathleen Knox

Subtitled “A musical extravaganza to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee” the production endeavoured to live up to this description and for the most part achieved its aim. This ‘One Night Only’ show was a showcase of the talent of the city and not just Sunderland AOS. Opened by Louise Wiegand and Brian Leech with the appropriate “Diamonds are Forever” and a specially rearranged version of “One Night Only” to fit in with the Jubilee celebrations, the tone was set for the next two and a half hours. A chronological look back at the music and history of the last sixty years took in many old favourites in song and dance; each section introduced with humour by Andy Oliver.
Dance was provided through the talented male and female youngsters of the Kathleen Knox Dancers which added a sophisticated interpretation to many medleys of music and genres of dance style – especially in the poignant James Horner "Titanic" medley.

Three choirs of local schools from Springwell, Hylton Red House and Castletown (appropriately dressed in the national colours) added almost 120 primary school children to the stage each with a section of their own choice. It could be easy to consider these were there purely to add the ‘Ahh’ factor to the proceedings but that would be incorrect as each choir was talented in its own right singing amongst others a medley of Beatles songs almost fifty years after the originals graced the same stage; as well as songs sung in Swahili and my personal favourite the Maori version of Pokarekare Ana

At times some of the action was a little too deep on the stage and in such a grand venue fuller use of the performance area could have been advantageous but this did not detract from what was a fine night’s entertainment culminating in a good old singalong in a ‘Last Night of the Proms’ finale.

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