View from the Green Room: A summer feast from TheatreBox
TheatreBox's Grease
TheatreBox Stage and School Academy stages its summer production tonight with edited versions of Grease and Matilda for its summer production.
There’s a packed and enthusiastic house for tonight’s young troop of players and why not because they’re all immediately related. This is families making memories and one of the great joys of life is seeing your family giving it their all on stage in the performing arts.
The opening Grease is performed by their senior students and it’s all a-wop-bop-alloo-bop-a-wop-bamboo from opening to curtain.
Well…just everyone loves Grease. Its catchy tunes are infectious and its beat thumps away on your heart for days afterwards. Not that any of it makes any real sense – except in a teen world where relationships and image are everything.
‘Grease is the word'; it’s got groove, it’s got me-an-ing and it’s everywhere that matters in a fifties world of cool shades, hairstyles and cars.
TheatreBox brings us to a world of slick chick bobby-soxers and leather-jacketed cool dudes like ducks to water. In fact, Dara McCarthy as Danny is beyond cool as are his gang of five T-Birds of Kenickie (James Lyons Power), Sonny (Quinlan Hennessy), Doody (Eli Lacey) and Roger (Tom Power).
It’s as cool a romcom as you could find in a month of Mondays. Boy meets girl, falls in and out of love, a crucial incident occurs, and they’re back together like cooing turtle doves. Happy out.
Sophie O’Connor (also Elodie Dooley) is the sweet, wholesome and innocent Sandy who’s in the tug-of-war between gauche child and trendy teen – anxious to hold onto the family values she’s been reared on but tugged toward a more adult world where image is everything. And guess what? Hasn’t she got four pals in her Pink Ladies gang – Frenchy (Aoife Daly /Kate Holden), Marty (Romey Carroll/Lola Rodger), Jan (Sarah Dixon/Holly Phelan) and Rizzo (Mary Duggan/Ciara Doherty) – for the four uber-cool buckos as well. Of course, Sandy has a rival in Patty Simcox (Lucy Power/Katie O’Reilly). The part of Cha Cha – the smartest dancer at the Rydell High prom in the excellent “Born to hand jive, baby” dance contest— is shared between Grace Doherty, Shona Pidgeon, Ellie Walsh and tonight’s Alex Reinl.
Miss Lynch (Eve O’Donnell/Wendy O’Connor) is a very strict school principal, while Ryan Foley and Harvey Crowley share the part of Eugene the school nerd who is objectionably bullied throughout (this part needs an urgent rewrite from the show’s owners).
Liam Butler directs with a sure touch and hairs and make-up bring us all back to that Buddy Holly era when it was cool to be young.
Matilda is a sure-fire winner with any young audience. A story that’s easy to follow, funny and quirky characters that bring many laughs, a villain that’s always destined to fail, a kind and caring teacher and a heroine that is adorable. Throw in a first-rate musical score and dance routines performed at breathtaking space by schoolkids playing schoolkids and you can see why adults left the hall agog at what they had witnessed.
Junior TheatreBox produced a splendid edit of Matilda with all the best songs and characters in place. Paul Weldon directs with choreographers Robyn Walsh and Ali Reville, and fills our stage with edgy, in-yer-face routines in a string of up-tempo numbers such as Naughty…Hammer…Chokey…When I grow up…and, of course, Revolting Children that brings a standing ovation.
Lily Mai Cummins (who shares the role with the excellent Deryn McDonnell) is an outstanding Matilda with a great voice and a mature acting style that delights all night. Cian Kennedy has the young audience in stitches as terrifying Agatha Trunchbull – I would cross the street to avoid her – and there are cheers when the kids do the biz on Agatha at curtain.
The older gang of eight – Erica (Phoebe Cummins and Ella Raftice), Tammy (Ailhe Ní Dhubha, and Tilly Colclough), Amanda (Sally Molly and Lucy Brennan), Lavender (Niamh Butler and Norah Crowe), Alice (Leila Frisby and Katie Sheehan), along with chief scene-stealer George Malone as Roger – give it socks whenever they hit the boards. ‘Revolting Children’ is a crazy feast of rebellion that envelopes the stage and smashes across the stage-apron in a frenzied attack on Agatha Trunchbull’s attempts to squash any attempt at a kids’ rebellion in her school.
Matilda’s family of hapless Wormwoods are a hoot (Oisín McCarthy, Veronica McBarron, Tom Burns and Fionn McCarthy) and Seren Breen, Aoife Devlin, Saoirse Penkert and Pippa Gallagher all play Miss Honey on alternate performances.
It’s a delight to see so many young faces on stage and, also, so much talent. Well done TheatreBox.
