Musical Geek - Musical Theatre Reviews

It's fair to say that this production of the classic West Side Story could easily lead you to believe that you've stumbled into a West End Theatre of the future and you are witnessing some of the stars of the day entertain the masses as they always hoped they would. However in reality you’re at one of the best provincial theatres in the UK, the Birmingham Hippodrome, experiencing the pick of local youth talent deliver a quite exceptional performance that would be worthy of any West End Stage. What is even more astounding is the sheer creative artistry and stagecraft on display, both leads Alex Cook (Tony) and Kamilla Fernandes (Maria) are so young yet display the skill of seasoned professionals, in an industry in which it is notoriously difficult to 'make it' one cannot just be a singer, dancer or actor, one has to be all three and these two are exactly that, one can only speculate what standards they will achieve when they complete their respective Musical Theatre qu

It's always a little more of a challenge to review a production you've never seen before, so have little to go on or comparison to make and this couldn't be more true of Soho Cinders, written by the decidedly well known George Stiles and Anthony Drewe but, still relatively rarely performed with this being the Midlands Premiere by TFTR Productions. Loosely based on the Cinderella Story, I guess one could say this is an unusual, possibly daring retelling of a classic fairytale, performed with vigour by a talented cast, gloriously orchestrated for the first time in the role of Director/Choreographer by Gaynor Whitehouse, ably assisted by Jez Luckins as Assistant Director and Chris Corcoran as Musical Director. At the centre of this colourful piece of Musical Theatre is Robbie a young, gay guy running a launderette that he's about to lose due to his now deceased mother not having made a will and played with naive charm and a quietly powerful vocal by Joshua Hawkins. He