The Oxford Gang Show gets better and better each year. My best items were 'Magical Book Tour' performed by the Junior Gang and Spooks is also a great item. The people that make the props, costumes have done a fab job. The sound this year has been the best its been for a long time. The Oxford Gang Show is for the whole family and is well worth the money. Well done everyone!
2007 is Scouting’s Centenary Year and this year’s Gang Show in Oxford is lively and colourful. It was the first Oxford Gang Show I had attended and I wondered how I would enjoy it as a member of the public rather than as a proud parent. It was a very enjoyable evening and the performances were of a high standard.
Kim Griffiths, guide leader with 6th Headington Guides, has done an excellent job directing this show, which ran smoothly considering it was a first performance. All of the fourteen sketches/songs have been sponsored by local organisations or people. This has helped to ensure that the costumes and scenery were excellent.
The cast is about 300 in total. As a result, the sound in all the chorus numbers was strong. The opening was a vivacious rendering of “Life is a Cabaret” sung just by girls. This soon moved on to the “Magical Book Tour” which started off with a teacher leaving his pupils to read by themselves. It involved some younger performers who put in confident performances. Very quickly we were transported to the worlds of the Willy Wonka factory and the Big Friendly Giant. The costumes for the Oompa Loompas and the BFG were superb.
The Halloween scene which followed had a remarkable backdrop to the ghosts and witches. The sketch “The Wash” involved some very humorous performances in drag. All the actors in this sketch played their parts particularly well in this and in “The Beauty Parlour” in the second half. In “Fairy Tales”, characters from a number of nursery rhymes were on stage. It was just too quick to recognise them all as some were not audible. The first half ended with a dramatic rendering of patriotic songs, with some of the audience waving their Union Jacks. The first night audience was rather caught out by the National Anthem being played at the start of this section rather than at the end of the show.
The second half had a mixture of familiar and unusual features. Among the familiar items was “The butcher, the baker…..and the little black bag” which is always a favourite with Gang Show audiences. I was particularly struck by the varied costumes for this sketch. The “100 Years of Scouting” songs were started off by some older scouts and had an old newsreel displayed on a screen on stage of some of the early events in scouting. The inclusion of girls Irish dancing to River Dance was unusual. The Finale began with “Perfect Day”, then the long awaited “Crest of a Wave” and finally a reprise of the show’s songs.
Altogether this was a thoroughly enjoyable evening for a family audience.