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Five stars (out of five)
The musical version of Willy Russell’s play took the West End by storm. This production of the play does the same for the Miller Centre audience.
Director Morven Rae has gathered the cream of amateur actors about her to tell the tale of the twins, separated at birth, whose lives re-connect in spite of every adult effort to stop them meeting.
Moving from childhood to young adulthood, twins Eddie and Mickey reversed their years with skill.
Mickey has remained with his hard-up mother, given down-to-earth bluntness mixed with yearning by Helen Chisnall.
We meet Mickey, aged seven, as Kevin Hayes bursts upon the drama shooting his way through a cowboys and Indians chase.
Scruffy, his knee scraped and wearing a wonderful hand-me-down jumper, he is fearless and out to conquer the world.
Eddie, growing up with money, is the polite school boy, yet Paul Longhurst created a child longing to be as abandoned as the friend he was making.
The two actors were in no way alike, yet their powerful ability to convey the boys’ bonding makes them believable twins.
Vicky Watkins is the frightened obsessive Mrs Lyons, Eddie’s ‘mother’.
Growing slowly from normality through to the mental problems which bear such tragic results, her longing to have and hold her child were visible.
The play, set here in the round, is narrated by Martin J Kingston with an echo to his voice as he weaves the tale.
It is further enhanced by members of the cast who appear in the many minor role, from ‘children’ to workers, to the police.
Linda is the childhood sweetheart of both the boys and Fiona Rae contrasts well the carefree child with the careworn adult.
Memorable moments include Mickey’s poem as he yearns to be eight, the will he, wont he kiss me as Mickey and Linda play truant from school and the mechanical factory floor where Mickey works and Eddie is the Management.
The whole play is underscored by original music composed and played by Ian Rae and everyone concerned in this production is to be congratulated on an absorbing , challenging evening where drama is given full reign.
Theo Spring
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