The Pied Piper

The atmosphere in the venue and within the audience was really good and there was a nice family feel in the auditorium.

The script written by Kate Courage was incredibly clever and used rhyming couplets throughout, it is hard to believe that Kate isn’t a professional script writer. There was a strong message conveyed through the story that very cleverly linked well with modern issues, such as the Calais refugee camp, although the massage may have been a little overstated.

The band, under the musical direction of Kate Courage, was very good and they really helped make the musical numbers pop, it was obvious that these numbers had been very well rehearsed. All the songs, also written and composed by Kate, were exceptionally good and all had pleasing melodies and clever harmonies. The songs in the first half were definitely the stronger, most notably Hamelin Town; Rats! and Mr Mayor all of which were great toe-tappers.

There weren’t any specific big choreography routines, but what was there was done incredibly well. Many routines used movement really well, moving the chorus around a lot gave the impression of bigger crowd numbers and panic and it worked. Again, you could tell that these routines had been well rehearsed as everyone knew what was required of them. 

In venues like St Margarets Hall, where there is no luxury of side wings or space to store scenery between scenes, it can be tricky to change scenes and store the different sets. The beauty in The Pied Piper was that it used just the one. Whether it was written like that in the first place or written to accommodate the spatial issues we don't know, but what we do know is that it worked really well and completely fitted the story and the play. When only having one set, especially one that is visible before the play and during the intermission, it does pay to have a visually appealing one. Unfortunately, parts of the stage were in need of a little TLC and some of the audience were at eye level with the top of a flat that had not been fully painted and was coming away from its baton.  However, the centre of the stage was dominated by a very impressive wishing well, which looked fantastic and was used as a focal point during the performance.

The wardrobe department, coordinated by Ellen Bishop, did a sterling job. All the characters were in different outfits and all looked like they were from the same time period. When they were together it produced a great look. Unfortunately, the Pied Pipers costume although lovely and suitable for the character didn’t quite match the lyrics of the song describing him! The lyrics said he had a long coat half red and half yellow and a chequered scarf, but he had neither of these things.

Again, probably due to space restrictions, there wasn't an abundance of props but what few there were looked good and were in keeping with the performance. Of course the best props were easily the rats!  What a fantastic idea it was to have them scamper onto the stage from all around the cast, it looked really effective and, not only was it surprising but, it definitely gave the impression of a scary rat invasion. The conveyor belt that led the rats to their watery grave was very clever and looked great too.

There was no special elaborate make up within the production and, at the same time, no one looked like they were lacking so overall a good job done. Having some performers wearing mics and some not, can cause sound to be a little unbalanced and that was the case in this production. Those performers who were mic’ed sounded great and were very clear whereas sometimes it was hard to hear those that were not, this was most notable in "The Children Dream" where it was a struggle to hear the children, which was a real shame as they were singing their hearts out. As already mentioned the sound through the speakers was good with only one small issue due to feedback, certainly not enough to distract from the performance. However, for some of the audience the hanging mics could have been a bit of a nuisance as they were in eye line, but in a venue like St Margarets with no proper staging to hide things, it is hard to think of an obvious solution. The sound effects were good especially the sound of the rats squeaking through the town and the sound of them plopping into the water.

The lighting for the production was very good and, considering the size of the space from stage to ceiling, worked well. The lighting effects gave the production a suitably moody appearance. Especially good was the scene where the children had to enter the Piper's lair, which was all seen through the use of lighting and shadows. There were not actually too many technical things in this production. So apart from the slight blip in the sound, everything seemed to work well.

Hats off to you and your society for making great use of your youth members. All the youngsters had lovely well defined roles and they all managed to have dialogue and singing. All their characters were well in keeping with the story and at no point did it seem that they were there just for the sake of having youth members involved. 

It would be nice to comment on every member of the company but, unfortunately, it was hard to work out who some of the characters were (maybe pictures in the programme would be useful). Therefore, please find a review for the obvious characters, however we would like to mention that everyone did a great job and worked well together. There was definitely a feeling of teamwork amongst the group.

Duncan Browne did a good job of playing the Mayor. Sometimes, with these types of characters, it is easy to play them in an over the top way which Duncan did not do. This made the character much more grounded and the play benefitted from this. He even managed to elicit a bit of sympathy for the character and came across as someone who genuinely felt he was doing his best for the village, rather than coming across as an out and out villain.  Duncan did not have much singing to do, but what he did, he did well.

Georgia Lawrence was easily the star of the show as Romilda. You could feel that the audience truly invested in her character and that was all down to Georgia's remarkable performance. For someone so young, she had an amazing stage presence and a lovely singing voice. She effortlessly and naturally embodied the character. It would be surprising if Georgia did not manage to pursue a career on the stage and we all look forward to hearing big things from her in the future.

Theo Nash, who played the young Piper, played this small part extremely well and his very believable performance set the production up beautifully. He was amazing during the long opening monologue, during which he had to sit alone on the stage looking scared and frightened, while staring directly at the audience! This is a task that would be difficult for many adult performers but Theo managed it with ease and showed that more can be said with some good facial expressions then can be said with a thousand words of dialogue.  nother future star perhaps.

Pied Piper (Adult)

Iorwerth Mitchell, did a lovely job of playing 'The Piper' and used his eyes well to make the Piper come across as very mysterious, even eerie. He had a beautiful singing voice which actually was almost hypnotic, which really fitted his character well. Like the other actors, Iorwerth had great stage presence and completely made the most of his stage time, just a shame that he wasn't on more as he was the title character and there was definitely room to build this part up more.

We are very sorry to say we don't know the name of the lady who played the Baker Woman (she gave food to Romilda). However, she played her part really well and was a fantastic background actor, constantly animated and reacting to everything, whilst not distracting from the main action. Again, she had lovely stage presence and a lovely singing voice.

Overall, this was an enjoyable impressive production which showed off the talent of Kate Courage. However, the production was a little dark and maybe it should have been made clearer on posters, as there were many youngsters in the audience. Thank you very much for the invitation. 

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