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| The Oxford Playhouse was seething with a capacity audience
before the start of Saturday's Musical Youth Company of Oxford production
of 'Me and My Girl'. The story is of a cockney geezer (Bill Snibson) who inherits a large fortune and the title of Lord Hareford. This cockney geezer has a cockney geezeress (by the name of Sally Smith) who is soon shown to be a not entirely suitable partner to the parvenu aristocrat. In a (reasonably) simple tale of people versus the Establishment, Bill and Sally (after two and a half hours of singing, dancing, slapstick and awful puns) reach a happy conclusion to their troubles. Apart from one badly-tuned minor solo at the beginning of the performance, the singing was very polished. Notably, David Wilson as Herbert Parchester pulled off the song 'The Family Solicitor' with great comedy and drew massive appreciation from the audience. Louise Cobb as Sally Smith, with a fine cockney accent, also stole the show with two very professionally sung solos and her role in four other group songs. The dancing - apart from a few stray beach-balls (it would take too long to explain!), was impeccable, and the choreographer Joanne Cook worked wonders with the cast of sixty 12-18yr olds. Comic highlights included the wonderfully dead-pan Ashley Harvey as Charles the Butler, Sam Hedges as the swiftly-ageing Sir Jasper Tring (an actor with admirable command of a walking stick for a 17-year-old) and Alex Williams (as Bill Snibson) whose innumerable antics added zest to a huge (and very funny) part. The direction (a debut by Dave Crewe) was innovative, and the music supplied by the fourteen-piece band was toe-tapping stuff. The young and extremely talented cast pulled off the 2½ hour performance to loads of curtain calls and spontaneous applause. Don't miss next year's performance! Joe Pike, 26.04.03 |
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