Hungerford Town Show comes back for more!
Community of Hungerford Theatre Company: Lionel Bart’s Oliver!
at John O’Gaunt School, Hungerford
from Wednesday, February 14, to Saturday, February 17
Review by DEREK ANSELL
TAKING on a large-scale musical like Oliver! is a brave and tricky assignment for any amateur group. Lacking an army of seasoned choreographers, voice coaches, musical directors, actors and directors found in professional theatre, the amateurs are on their own with limited resources and just their own enthusiasm and talent to carry them through. A lot of hard work had obviously gone into this CHTC production.
From the opening sequence with the young actors singing Food, Glorious Food to the dramatic ending, these talented citizens of Hungerford, young and old worked hard. Very hard.
Understudy Tim Beckwith played Fagin in the performance we saw and did well with it. Gareth Burgess was a suitably bumbling Bumble and Karen Ashby, Widow Corney. Delilah Freeman convinced as Oliver as she was playing a small boy whose voice had not broken. Other parts were well acted although there was a lack of rough, cockney voices in the scenes with Fagin, with one exception... Sasha Lovell was very good as Nancy, with voice, movement and swagger all spot-on.
Individual singers performed very well, although group singing in choral style was occasionally a little shaky, as were some of the large-scale dance routines.
Paul Sanday and Lesley Vallance produced very fine set designs that suited the quick-change scenes as they came up.
Lionel Bart’s all singing, all dancing spectacular musical is a challenge for any company, amateur or professional.
Director Hoffi Robinson and musical director Jo Pollit did very well to put it all together and keep it flowing at a reasonably good pace. Co-ordinating 15 adult performers and 19 child actors and organising the singing, dancing and other activities was a mammoth task.
They did it very well and everybody involved at CHTC gave it their very best shot from start to finish.
