The Sound of Music

The hills and infact, the entire town was filled with The Sound of Music, as Wickersley Youngstars returned to the Civic Theatre for the first time since the pandemic. The  show was a huge success from beginning to end and can only enhance the reputation of this youth company. 

Calleigh Cottrell, playing the role of Maria gave us a truly great performance. Her singing was spectacular and was every inch the Maria we all have in our minds. Supporting Calleigh was Richard Thomas Wood as Captain Von Trapp who was excellent. He never broke character once, and moved effortlessly from the stern sea captain, to the loveable father. The von Trapp children, who were led by Alana Tomlinson  in the role of Liesl were delightful throughout and captured the hearts of the audience. The rendition of all their numbers was enthusiastic  with  high level of  performance. 

As well as being the shows director, Jonah Thompson found himself in the role of Uncle Max with four weeks notice. Jonah was great in the role and a part I would like to see him to again in the future. His comedy timing was spot on. Grace Castle, as Elsa, gave us another great performance and it was nice to see a different interpretation of this character. Ellie Habbin as the Mother Abbess has to be another singled out for her performance. She played her part with sympathy and understanding and her singing of the number "Climb Every Mountain" was superb. Many of the audience were reduced to tears.

The scenery, from Scenic Projects was fabulous, especially the Von Trapp Villa. Lights and sound also added greatly to overall production. Personally, I did think the scene changes could have been a little quicker, but this is a minor issue and didn’t take away from the overall production. 

The production team of Jonah Thomson & Sally Ormesher (Co- Director), Steve Trotter (Musical Director), and Summer Williams  (Choreographer) have every right to be proud of their achievements with this Group. It was obvious that much hard work had been put into their efforts to ensure that a truly memorable performance was presented to the audience.

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