What a great night. So relaxed this year. Ran the tech very easily and so huge thanks to the entire production team. You did us so proud guys.
Alice, Niall and Stephanie have a hit waiting to happen and it looks, sounds and feels like an FCT ripsnorter.
Here’s a tease…
13 features a great, great band. I have to say that before anything else.
One of our best ever, and this is appropriate because tonight was a tribute night to Fiona Pirrie, one of our (non rock) stalwarts who so tragically passed away last year just after The Chess Game.
She’d have loved it.
We also raised nearly £200 for Maggies Centre on her behalf which, I’m sure, will make her husband Bill very happy.
But tonight was about our cast.
What a magnificent, epic performance.
The comments on leaving were ridiculously positive.
We have a great show, a memorable one, on our hands guys.
Make the most of it.
Sell it to whoever you know because everyone’s going to love this.
It was a long shift yesterday from 12 till 6.30 but boy do we have a show. In every department, dialogue, movement and singing it’s great. Really funny throughout with a cracking script. Tickets are going well so far with nearly 600 sold. If you want them you can call the ticket hotline on 07794 144 372. Adults £11. Concessions £9. Family ticket of 4 (max 2 adults) for only £30 and we have a cut price matinee where all tickets are £8 on Saturday 7th at 2.30.
We are blessed to have such a talented designer as Scott Taylor who has created all of our posters, programmes, flyers and ads,; all free of charge, for several years now. Ad what’s more he does them all from his studio in The Virgin Islands.
Go Scott, another fantastic poster with Harmony looking fantastic in her full Annie costume. More masterwork from the costume wifies of Bangholm.
EACH night, oh best beloved, men will lay out their two shoes and their little stone axe all in a line. A ritual preparation in order to have them handy for throwing at the cat when he scratches at the door to get out at 3am.
It’s a right passed down from father to son since before the days of Fred Flintstone and laid down in literature by Rudyard Kipling in the perennial children’s favourite Just So stories.
But The Cat That Walked By Itself is another story. Last night was devoted entirely to the journey the Elephant’s Child had to take on his path to a little more wisdom and a far greater nose.
Performed by the Forth Children’s Theatre, Just So is a two-hour musical melding of several of Kipling’s stories into one extravaganza.
Taking on the weighty mantle of director for the first time was 19-year-old Cameron Dyer who, after the FCT’s award-winning Ragtime last festival, had rather a lot to live up to.
Acquitting himself well, Dyer shows an excellent eye for putting a production together. He handles the technical very well but may want to pull away from playing too much with the set and focus on the storytelling, particularly the moments when important props need to be highlighted and the audience needs to focus on a character’s solo rather than the moving set.
The leads were well cast and wore their characters confidently. Despite wonderful diction, accents and pronunciation, though, their vocal projection often didn’t have the strength or range to carry the score.
Rebecca Gilhooley’s feisty Kolokolo Bird played an amusing and thought-provoking foil for Andrew McDivitt’s endlessly inquiring Elephant Child, while Becki Clark’s Eldest Magician had the engaging touch of a rather posh bedtime storyteller.
Esther Scott and Gus Harrower’s double act as the hermit Parsee Man and Cooking Stove spent much of the night threatening to steal the show, only to be given a good run for their money by Kangaroo (Ronan Rafferty) and Dingo Dog’s (Kirsty Shaw) cautionary tale of wishful thinking. The real highlight last night, however, was the cast and crew’s absolute professionalism in keeping the show on track through two brief power cuts.
Forth Children's Theatre 