The Rise and Fall of Little Voice

~~As always Pauline Iredale’s PODS Front of House team gave us a very warm welcome and showed us into the Key Studio auditorium, which had the open stage on two levels on view. On the ground level was the kitchen and living room with stairs leading up to the first floor landing and LV’s bedroom.
Rob Melhuish’s set design and construction was excellent, allowing plenty of movement and height and shape. There was also good use made of the stage right corridor, or street, below LV’s bedroom window with access via the scaffolding outside. This had to be a substantially built set as all components were in full use, and Rob certainly provided that, which I am sure gave the cast great confidence. The Lighting and Sound were also very good with particular praise going to the house fire special effect and post fire damaged set. The Properties by Sue Monteith, Pete Monteith, Saffron Foster and Kerry Monteith were well considered and of the period, as were the costumes by Lucille Ash.
The cast, who are all musical theatre veterans, showed their versatility in being able to tackle high comedy and drama with equal aplomb, and the more plays that PODS do the better they get. I applaud PODS for deciding to tackle dramatic plays as well as their usual musicals as the acting experience will inevitably benefit their performance in musical theatre storytelling.
Little Voice was played with conviction by Claire Brough and although I thought she could have gone even further into herself and thus appear to come out more as the famous singers that she was emulating, Claire’s performance was very sincere and believable. Claire’s vocal performances were equally good. Amanda Villamayor’s machine gun delivery of Mari, LV’s mother, was carried off with just the right amount of manic energy. Amanda was able to show Mari’s insecurities whilst pretending to the world that she was a confident matriarch and independent single mother without need of a permanent male partner in her life, however her weakness shows when she meets Ray Say, played by Doug Pattie. Ray is an opportunist entertainment manager who sees his main chance cash cow in LV, as long as she and her mother are open to manipulation. Doug played this part very well and was likeable even though you knew he was purely selfish. LV’s naïve innocent love interest was played convincingly by Harvey Jones, it was just a shame that a bit more wasn’t made of the “spectacular” lighting effect that he had been working on for months. Alex Broadfield, who is an accomplished actor in his own right having played many lead roles in previous musicals was quite happy to take smaller parts in this play and performed the parts as the telephone engineer and Mr Boo with equal realism. Heather Knapp was brilliant as Mari’s halfwit neighbour Sadie. Heather has the ability to evoke sadness one minute and then turn on a sixpence to produce belly laughs, this is a rare gift and a joy to watch.
It was with great sadness that the passing of Sandra Samwell, the Director of the play, was announced prior to the performance. We were also told that Sandra had pulled out three weeks before curtain up due to ill health and had handed the reigns to Jennie Dighton, who along with Karoline Andrew as Assistant Director had the task of bringing the production home. I am pleased to say that they did so admirably and my congratulations go all concerned on this triumph for PODS. The direction was sympathetic to the characters blending the pathos in with the comedy beautifully and producing some terrific performances from the cast. The movement on both levels of the stage was fluid and well conceived allowing a great pace with no dead spots whatsoever.
This was a very good overall production from the “Little Voice” production team at PODS, keep it up and I can’t wait to see what they come up with in the dramatic field next.

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