Winter Showcase

Many thanks to Preston College Performing Arts for inviting me along to see their production of their ‘Winter Showcase’ at the Charter Theatre in Preston on Thursday 15th December 2022. This production combined students across the acting, musical theatre, and dance courses throughout the college. It was a pleasant and enjoyable evening of entertainment. This review will firstly deliberate the single disciplinary styles within the production and then discuss my favourite moments within the show, which were the multidisciplinary moments of the show.

The piece started with a variety of dance numbers performed by students who were at higher and/or further education. From seeing the last show of the students from the previous academic year, I was not surprised at the extraordinary ability and talent that these performers displayed consistently. All dancers were tight in their movements, showed expert levels of technique and provided professionally polished minutia throughout the show including eyes lines, integration of breath, head placements and precise lines of energy. All choreography throughout was technically complex, showcasing varying techniques including contemporary, numerous varieties of jazz, acro, ballet and Latin American/ ballroom styles. As per the last show, not one dancer was displaced or out of time and they work perfectly synchronised and should be extremely proud off there work.

The nativity play was simply wonderful, it started with who I assume to be the student’s tutor giving a prologue, welcoming a local primary school to the stage, I thought ‘Awww how cute!’ What materialised onto the stage was the college’s drama students portraying the classical nativity scene as children, similarly to ‘The Flint Street Nativity’. Throughout the show there were loads of innocent mishaps such as the narrator mistaking the name Mary for Merry, which was further mistaken as the reason for the saying ‘Merry Christmas’. Mary and Joseph were wonderfully played as juveniles and there was great rapport between them as they corrected each others mistakes. There was a 2 person donkey with a back half which couldn’t keep up with its front half, and so becoming a walking sheet wondering around the stage aimlessly, and other characters all too familiar with in the traditional story. I did feel some of the actors could have characterised child like traits further so this was consistent through out, but that being said, this was a wonderful and very funny piece of theatre within the showcase.

The Musical Theatre students topped and tailed the interval with a festive narrative which included songs from differen musicals to help deliver the story. This was very thematic as it told a story of a human elf who was mistakenly taken back to the north Pole and raised as an elf. It deliberated his learning of such and finding his real family. To me this section off the show felt a little laboured and I thought  perhaps more of the storytelling could have been delivered through song to lift the energy. I did love the version of  ‘Fine Fine Line’  which was delivered extraordinarily.

The Acting students also provided wonderful moment within the show which was described by my host as a piece of Physical Theatre. Personally I would debate whether this could have been defined as Dance Theatre, but that is not a debate for this review. Either way, a wonderful conceptual narrative was received of a group of children who plotted a mission to open their presents early before Christmas morning. This was executed wonderfully in a ,nonverbal manner integrating various techniques, physical characterisations and concepts to provide a wonderful and exciting moment of storytelling.

The finale was a mash up of a variety of songs from White Christmas, and was presented by students across the dance courses and the musical theatre courses, resulting in a danced focused piece of musical theatre, which was refreshing to see.

By far, my favourite moment of the show was a fusion of a couple of numbers from the show Chicago, performed by the dance students and choreographed by Maxine Bowers. This choreography epitomised every essence of the Fosse technique, combining minute articulation of gestural and pedestrianised movements, seductive sass and  grotesque angular moments to create a slick, stylised and polished moment of art. As mentioned above, to me this was a multidisciplinary piece of dance, as the dancers personified the ideas created with the choreography, connecting the body to the breath and really emphasising the poignant moments of the dance through characterisation. Very well done to everyone involved in this piece.

Thank you once again to Preston College for this wonderful night of entertainment, I look forwards to seeing more from this college and its students.

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