Wind In The Willows, Toad In A Hole

Barton Players Summer School is now in its 20th year and is thus very much a part of the fabric of the local community and places are well sought after. And the driving force behind this phenomenal success is artistic genius and leading light of Barton Players, Keith Badham, who once again has written, produced and directed this year’s production.  The course runs for a week, where twenty-four youngsters aged between six and seventeen attend the course every day from ten am until 4pm, learning lines and rehearsing the show which they then perform on the Friday evening and again on the Saturday lunchtime. So, at the end of an extremely hot week we joined an audience made up of mostly family members (some of which were there for a second time!) to see the final Saturday performance, and what fun it turned out to be.

The set (and props), designed by Milly Badham (AJ Art Club) was a bare stage with a very large forestage and a magnificent display of artwork on to the backcloth of the Wild Wood depicting a flowing river with sunshine and overhanging leaves, completed by swimming ducks and a frog beautifully lit in a rainbow of blue, green and red tints. To either side of the stage were some very colourful green cut outs to represent the riverbank and wild wood. The excellent lighting was by Rachael and Keith Bowie. It certainly set the scene very well indeed. To complete the family affair the sound was by Adam Bowie. None of the cast wore face mics but a handheld mic was used by each singer.  Keith Badham positioned himself stage right at the front of the stage acting as prompt. Both light and sound cued faultlessly.

The real star of the stage however was Toad’s magnificent Caravan, beautifully made by Keith Bowie and decked out in Rainbow colours. Well done indeed to Milly Badham and AJ Art Club!

Costumes by Derryanne Blunt and Kera Rose were mainly a wonderful array of waistcoats, tabards, dresses and headgear, representations of the various animals they were portraying. Underneath the various waistcoats all the cast were wearing white T-shirts with the Barton summer school logo on it.  There were some super touches such as Ron Rabbit, played by Mia Clarke who carried a large cutout carrot throughout the show.

Choreography by Daisy Cassels was simple with some well thought out hand and body movements, but particularly well-rehearsed and great fun to watch. The pace which inevitably dropped at times due to quite a few prompts was very quickly restored every time they came to a choreographed number and quite clearly enjoyed by both the actors and the audience.

The show itself was narrated by one of the younger members, a very confident Xander Ponsonby playing the Wind In The Willows author, Kenneth Grahame whom, with storybook in hand guided us through the adventures in the Wild Wood.

The four main characters were well contrasted to each other led by Tallulah Smith as Toad in a gender-neutral cast, who showed us what a great singing voice she had as well as being a pretty confident actress. Definitely one to watch

Ratty was well played by Edward Thompson Hoare complete with Panama hat and ratty ears on top. A demure Mole was excellent; played by Maddie Laurie dressed all in black and Badger by a very upfront swaggering Chazza Simmons complete with an elegant black walking cane. All four of them did a great job.

For the baddies Chief Weasel played by Roxy Allen in true panto tradition elicited a boo every time she appeared on stage. You can’t get better praise than that!

Well done also to Alice Southern (Tikka The Otter), Katie Timpson (Walter Vole), Hannah Reeve (Farah Field Mouse), Mia Clark (Ron Rabbit), Poppy Widdowfield (Ledge The Hedgehog), Caitlin Wustrau (Weasel Two Two), Artie Thompson Nash (Goat Stoat), Aurora Soley (Up-Ferret), Christopher Paxton (PC Hobnob and Owl), Finn Thompson Hoare (Judge Mental/ Percy The Prison Guard), Chloe Randle (Flossie The Jailers Daughter), Jaxon Hottinger (Howard The Magistrates Clerk/ Weasel Guard 2), Hallie Dimmock (Nutkin The Squirrel), Esme Middleton-Brown (Frida Fox), Zelda Bee Jenart (Vel-Crow), Locksley Soley (Weasel Spy) and Max Philpot (Weasel Guard 1) – Love the imagination behind the naming of these characters! Brings a smile just reading the cast list.

This was a huge script which gave a two-hour show, which with more time could probably have done with a little trimming, as by the end the prompts were getting more frequent, which was not surprising since they only had the script a week and not sure I’d learn a script to perfection in that time. So, the pace was seriously affected, but even in their mistakes and prompts all were taken in good humour and its was clear the entire cast was having a ball! A week of their lives that will live long in the memory. So well done to Keith Badham and his cast and crew, I think as Keith said that the end, -  We can be very proud of them all!!

We very much look forward to your 21st summer school birthday!

© NODA CIO. All rights reserved.