Best Amateur Show - 2002
Choosing the best production of the year from thoses I have seen is never an easy task. For it is not necessarily the best company that takes the palm, but the one that employs it's known strengths to the best advantage in a production which, by it's own imagination, stimulates the imagination of it's audience, a company that ever seeks to fuse the various skills and disciplines to make a balance whole.
On these criteria, I proclaim the Mitre Players the winners, for their October production at the Mitre Theatre, Trinity School, Croydon, of Bye Bye Birdie.
This effervesent musical by Michael Stewart (book), Lee Adams (lyrics) and Charles Strouse (music) dates back to 1960, heralding the dawn of the most trumpeted decade of the century when rock 'n' roll ruled and Elvis was its King.
The spirit of the era, with it's affectionately mocking character based on the sultry rocker himself, was joyously captured in a great team effort under the direction of Paul Longhurst, backed by the musical direction of Keith O'Gorman and the choreographer Denise Gillman.
The hero, if such he can be called, was played by James Smoker, in his final year at Trinity. There may have been a few grainy edges in the production, but they were all in keeping with that rough-and-tumble decade in which anything seemed possible.
Croydon Advertiser Friday 25th October 2002
Donald Madgwick
***** (Five stars out of five)
Trinity School's Mitre Theatre is alive with the sound of music of the sixties this week, and it has given me one of the most enjoyable evenings I have spent in the theatre in a long time.
This effervescent musical dates from 1960, with music by Charles Strouse, lyrics by Lee Adams and book by Michael Stewart. The Rock 'n' Roll idol Conrad Birdie, about to join the army to the dismay of his fans, was in the vanguard of the many stage characters to be inspired by Elvis Presley.
The first UK production, in 1961, starred Marty Wilde, then rock star in his own right. James Smoker is still in his final year at Trinity, but he has the voice, the mannerisms and the personality for the part to a rare degree, notwithstanding a perfectly horrible wig.
Yet he is only one element, if a leading one, in a brilliant team effort. So bravo director Paul Longhurst for a show which is a joy from start to finish, with lively choreography by Denise Gillman, and MD Keith O'Gorman's band providing the perfect musical accompaniment, a musicianly ensemble which allows the singers full reign without any danger of being drowned out.
The cast of three dozen, including both teen and adult choruses, is led by Richard Allen and Clare Tibbalds as Conrad's musical management team Albert and Rosie, whose on-off love affair underpins the plot. Their feisty relationship threatens to be scuppered by Eileen Coombs as his mother, who gives a supercharged portrayal of a pushy, elderly emotional blackmailer.
The MacAfee family are a great collective unit: dad Ian Brown, spectacled an goofy; Claire Ali a typical small-town mum; Megan Harries-Rees in great form, a chip off the old block, as starry-eyed teenage daughter Kim; and last but not least chirpy, chipper Stephen Bird simply delightful as the spotty juvenile son.
Kim's high-handedly impetuous boyfriend is played with gusto by Mark Curtis who, no less than the remainder of the cast, throws himself into the proceedings with relish.
In short, this is a show brimful of confidence and bursting with brio, proving that Keats had no monopoly on beaded bubbles winking at the brim.
