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The main Bye Bye Birdie page is here
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.
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