Our Turn!

The 3^rd year Musical Theatre Showcase for 2016 was an exciting program of young talent displaying their musical and acting chops. At just over an hour long and with 30 graduates performing, it was a tight non-stop mix of material from mainly on and off Broadway. Each student chose their own party-piece and had a minute and a half in which to showcase the essence of their talent.

There were many highlights and far too many vignettes to mention individually but some that impressed were - Hannah Grondin’s full-throated delivery of “My Man” (Ziegfeld Follies), Christopher Thompson’s fun “In My Pocket” (A Gentleman’s Guide To Love and Murder), Samuel Skuthorp’s passionate “Her Voice” (The Little Mermaid), Matthew Yates’s funny “I Am Aldolpho” (The Drowsy Chaperone), and Ellie Nunan’s turn as Sally Bowles on the title tune from Cabaret.

Acting snippets that hit their mark were Christopher Thompson and Samuel Skuthorp in a scene from Tommy Murphy’s Holding the Man, Isaac Lindley’s army sergeant in We Were Soldiers, Eliesha Anne Keeling’s grab from Nora Ephron’s When Harry Met Sally, and Shannen Sarstedt and Thomas Armstrong-Robley’s couple from American Beauty.

My favourite pieces in the showcase each year are always the ensemble work with the company singing in pitch-perfect harmony. This year they opened the show with a lovely-lyrical arrangement of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “The Sound of Music” (The Sound of Music), closed it with “Our Turn”, a number especially written for the company by creative director Megan Shorey, and in between had the female ensemble sing A Chorus Line’s classic introspective number “The Music and the Mirror.”

Best of all however was the male ensemble with a striking and stirring arrangement of the pop song “He Ain’t Heavy He’s My Brother.” It thrilled.

There were also some dramatic scenes shot on video and the show opened with an effective cast run-down to introduce each artist.

Accompaniment was by Heidi Loveland on piano, Michael Boulus on violin, and Christopher Thomson on percussion. The program proved once again (if we needed any proof), that the future of our musical theatre is in very good hands.

Peter Pinne