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Review

Olde Tyme Music Hall, New Forest Players, Performing Arts Centre, Ballard School, New Milton

WHAT an absolutely delightful evening this proved to be, and yet it came perilously close to disaster when the sudden serious illness of Chairman Terry Langford meant he had to withdraw from the show at the last minute. Director Barbara Evans took his place in suffragette mode, the programme was judiciously tweaked and a fine job was done by all.

Everything was well-night perfect – the lovely drapes and costumes, the excellent piano and percussion accompaniment from Celia Cologne and Dan Priest, and, above all, the programme itself. Monologues, melodrama, the can-can and songs were brilliantly performed and had that extra something that turns good into exceptional. The audience may have thought they knew, for instance, The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God. Not this version with its constant interruptions they didn’t. And Albert and the Lion was truly wonderful, as were The Foundling, Maria Marten, Joshua, Waiting at the Church, Trafalgar Square – I could go on and on.

Best of all, wherever one looked on the stage there were happy, smiling faces and an obvious enjoyment that transmitted itself to the audience, who joined in lustily and went out into the cold night still singing the show’s praises.   

Linda Kirkman

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