For Young People Reviews 2006

NORTH CHESHIRE JEWISH PRIMARY SCHOOL - Rap Around with Mozart

*NORTH CHESHIRE JEWISH PRIMARY SCHOOL

Do you think Mozart is still cool after 250 years? The cast from North Cheshire Jewish Primary School certainly do, and after today's performance I'd be inclined to agree with them. If you're reading this chances are you've read the review(s) of Bexton Primary Schools production of this show, so I won't go into plot details or analyse the play whatsoever. What I will say is that the children's performance was wonderful, the singing practically flawless the dancing and acting fantastic.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself throughout, as (judging by their cheering) did the audience, this show received the best reception of the events I have attended during this years fringe.

Nicky Guy

BUXTON MUSEUM AND ART GALLERY - It's Taking Ages

22nd July

"It's Taking Ages" is part of National Archaeology Week taking place all over Britain. This interesting event mainly involved looking at different features of objects to try to find out how old they are. There was also an arty part of it too - we coloured in pictures of historical artefacts and stuck them on cardboard boxes. I suppose you could say we were making arty artefacts!

The fun activities included: counting the rings on a slice of tree trunk, putting pieces of pottery and spear heads in order - youngest to oldest, making the "arty artefacts", using a key identification chart to identify objects, putting different Ages in order from the Stone Age to Today, a quiz to find and draw things in the Museum's Time Tunnel and matching up ring patterns from a tree to charts from different times to find out when the tree grew.

I liked the fact that we were having a go ourselves and not just being told about it. I think that the best part was probably holding an axe head from 10,000 years ago and imagining a cave man using that to catch his supper!

I think that to improve this workshop they could give us even more stuff to do but it was still a cool event that taught me a lot that I didn't know before.

Annie Osborne (age 11)

THE YOUNG REC THEATRE COMPANY - Alice (and her Sister) in Wonderland

If you've lost your playful sense of fun, as I had yesterday, then this is the tonic. Alice (and her sister) in Wonderland is unadulterated, good fun

and is to be commended for confident and enthusiastic performances and its sense of shared enterprise. The youngsters at the Young REC Theatre Trust positively oozed youthful energy and filled the atmospheric setting at Poole's Cavern with poetry, laughter and song. Audiences both young and 'less young' appreciated the action packed re-telling of this loved classic. When at the start, Alice moans the familiar adolescent motto, 'I'm so bored', the audience and her sister have little idea of the extent of the Wonderland filled with eccentric characters and topsy-turvy logic they are about to enter.. It would be unfair to identify any one performer as standing out because the sense is that Martin Beard has drawn together a large number of young people and made them a team.

Bravo! I was thoroughly entertained!

Damian Sumner

THE YOUNG REC THEATRE COMPANY - Grimm's Fairy Tales adapted by Corinne Coward

14th & 15th July.

Nice One - Old Club House 5.30 - 6.15pm

The Young Rec Theatre Company gives a much-needed outlet for theatrical talent in Buxton, and this production certainly demonstrates this fact. Writer/co-director Corinne Coward has adapted two of the tales: The Almond Tree & Hansel and Grethal, re-writing mainly them in verse, which makes for easy memorising by the young actors.

The Almond Tree

A stereotypically wicked (but remarkably smiley) stepmother disposes of an unwanted stepson, gruesomely feeds bits of him in a stew to the unsuspecting husband, and buries his bones under the almond tree. The boy returns in the form of a beautiful bird, and in time, justice is done, and the stepmother gets her come-uppance.

Jay Sullivan, Maisie Watson, Georgia Coley, Lydia Tissier, Elizabeth Armett, Jennifer Barnes and Saffron Godwin all give strong performances.

Hansel and Grethal

Well...you know the story, don't you? Hansel and Gretal eat their parents out of house and home, so the mother takes them into the woods and leaves them to it. She knows they'll eat the trail of bread so there's no danger of them coming back. She and father will finally eat again! The Wicked Witch preys on the childrens' greed, tempting them inside her sweetie laden house, where she plans to cook them - just like the last lot she found wandering in the woods. It's a curious, highly moralistic tale performed with vigour and humour by its young cast.

Georgia Davey is excellent in the role of the witch, romping wildly around the stage with her cat and helpmate(Eliza Topham). Father (Holly Chetwood) and Mother (Anna Whaley) have some great lines as they justify the abandonment of their offspring. Hansel (Eva Muir-Cochrane) and Grethal (Elizabeth Armett) give good all-round performances, but could be even better if they can manage to look a lot more scared at the prospect of being boiled alive, and more urgent/desperate in their attempts to hold back the witch and her cat with the broomstick.

Having said that, all the children in the audience (mostly aged between 4 and 10) sat agog with mouths wide open, so it did it for them.

Susie Muncaster

BEXTON PRIMARY SCHOOL - Rap Around with Mozart

*BEXTON PRIMARY SCHOOL

8 July

North Cheshire Jewish Primary School 23 July

Paxton Suite, Pavilion Gardens

This non-stop 30-minute show uses some well-known Mozart tunes to tell a story and probe some philosophical questions. The whole thing is done with a great deal of enthusiasm and precision. All for 3!

Mercifully - for some - the "Rap" tag is just a means of arguing the contemporary relevance of Mozart and there is just one brief rap chorus. If you want more rap you'll need to look elsewhere.

To the philosophy then - what is the nature of love? And when we say we love food or music and when we say we love our families what exactly are we saying? You don't go to musicals for a very profound examination of such questions but they're worth asking. It would be interesting to know if the children singing here get the chance to pursue these questions outside of the performance.

As part of the narrative a mother seeks to reassure her child that it is possible to love Mozart's music, even if Mozart himself was a distinctly unpleasant person, and that it is possible to love music and still love your family. These issues are worrisome for some children and this musical may allow for exploration of them.

The other big question here is to do with the nature of genius - is it something you are born with (or without)? The (im)possibility of being both a genius and decent human being also emerges. Answers to any of these questions on the Fringe website discussion board please.

Some people may find the pedagogy of performances such as this a bit suspect - do we really want adults to be so directive of children's experiences? The children themselves seemed to enjoy being part of the musical and no doubt their relatives in the audience were very proud of so polished a performance. The ensemble sections were tight and precise and the soloists were clear and confident.

Keith Savage

An Alternative Review

I was hoping to review the Bexton Primary School's production of Ruti Worrall's musical myself but Keith Savage got there first. I think I liked it rather more than he did. In fact, I liked it very much indeed and consider it one of the most accomplished pieces of children's musical theatre I have seen both in its direction and composition (although Worrall is modest enough to give the credit for the music to Wolfgang Amadeus himself). If you can choreograph a piece in which 50 children in baseball caps and black t-shirts sit more or less still for 30 minutes, then the choreography was excellent with heads turning and children popping to their feet entirely on cue. The singing and acting were as unexpectedly delightful with the young Mozart, Rebecca Humphreys, giving an assured comical performance and her puzzled young protege Philip Cichocki hitting and holding all his notes. As for Savage's implication that the play was over-didactic I would not mind my child being given the dangerous message that the music of Mozart is alive and well 250 years after his birth. Worrall's theme of the arbitrary nature of genius as opposed to the more democratic distribution of love may not have been worked out to the degree of Peter Schaffer's Amadeus but was worth another airing and may well have sparked a few thoughts in young heads. Worrall should be able to sell her libretto to schools around the world. My only regret is that I attended the performance under what turned out to be false pretences and did not contribute £3 to a worthy cause.

Andrew Billen