Reviews
| | PROPOSALS REJECTED BY COUNCIL |  | | | LEARNING CAN BE FUN | | | | HAVING A LAUGH | | | | CHECK OUT YOUR HIGHWORTH | | | GET WRITING! | | |
|
|
|
Review by Ros Hollands of Gang Show in Swindon
SWINDON GANG SHOW
WYVERN THEATRE
The Swindon Gang Show is one of the productions I look forward to; with a little trepidation I might add. You see you never quite know how it'll be.
I have seen some quite spectacular Gang shows and some pretty dire ones. Never have I failed to acknowledge the hard work involved, joined with the fact that these kids, young people and their leaders, are not your average thespians or musical theatre starlets. They are just doing it because they have the chance to.
How then should I begin? A few words of encouragement I hear you say. Well ok. They certainly tried hard with what they had been presented with to perform.
Costumes were excellent with plenty of colour and variety. Well done to the seamstresses who put them all together. My only concern here was the Joseph medley done in Grease costumes and set. Confusing? I think so, even with a newly made coloured coat. Oh, and believe it or not, these and some of the others chosen during the show, are some of the most difficult songs to sing well. If you haven't got singers then don't attempt them. Most of the simpler, full company songs had power and a certain amount of appeal.
There were lovely moments in this show, especially the youngsters comedy turns, delivered with confidence and good timing.
Having taught children myself for many years, I have nothing but admiration for those people at the helm of this production. It really is a logistics nightmare getting all of them in the right place at the right time.
The circus themed piece was delightful as was the Oliver section.
If I'm truly honest I would have liked to have seen the stage used more fully. There were a lot of straight lines with the cast bunched together. Sometimes if you have everyone doing something different it works rather well. If everyone is doing the same thing it can be a disaster when wrong rhythms and directions stick out like sore thumbs. The Wyvern stage is big enough to display the cast in lots of pictures and positions where they can all still be seen.
Everyone seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves, both on stage and in the audience. Mums, dads and friends were delighted with their offspring and can be very proud of their achievements no matter how big or small.
Just getting up there is an achievement in its self.
4:48pm Thursday 6th March 2008
Print 
Email this
What are these links for?
If you liked this article and would like to share it with others on the web who might be searching for good content we've made it easy for you to do it.
At the bottom of all articles, you'll see links to six sites. These sites - commonly called 'social bookmark' or 'social news' sites - have large communities of web users who share and rate interesting, useful and fun things on the web.
Clicking the links will automatically add the address of the story you are reading to one of these sites, letting you share it with others. Each site will ask you to register to share stories. Registration is free and once a member, you can store, recommend and search for stories that interest you.
More on Digg
More on del.icio.us
More on Furl
More on reddit
More on NowPublic/
More on Yahoo!
