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| NYMT staged Cy Coleman & Neil Simon’s
Little Me at the Bloomsbury Theatre from 28th to 30th
August |
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Cast List
Aretha Ayeh – Announcer, 1st Val Girl
Georgia Bliss – 2nd Val Girl
Lucy Borne – Older Belle
Alice Brown – 1st Dough Girl, Val’s Nurse
Hanna Brunt – Assistant Director
Holly-Charlotte Carter – Pinchley’s Nurse
Jack Chard – Bernie, 1st Soldier
Jonah Book – Junior, Benny
Aiden Crawford – Butler, Sergeant, 1st Justice
Edward Currie – Bartender, Preacher, Yulnik
Roger Dipper – Kleeg, Doctor
Rhiannon Douty – 4th Val Girl
Louisa Farrant – Momma
Greg Fossard – George, 1st Sailor
Mark Gillon – Patrick Dennis
Sophie Griffiths – Ramona
Sarah Hagan – Belle
Jack Harrison – Golf Pro, Fred, 2nd Sailor
Alyn Hawke – Pinchley, General, Captain, Pancho
Sam Hayward – German Soldier, Prince
Dom Hodson – Noble
Amee Karlstrom – Court Woman
Milli Karlstrom – Secretary
Siobhan Madden – Colette
Alex McGeary – Newsboy, 2nd Soldier, 2nd Steward
Callum McIntyre – Salesman, 3rd Soldier, Victor
Lucy Miller – Miss Kemp, 3rd Girl
Joe Mott – Val Du Val
Kathleen Nance – Operator
Eve Ponsonby – Mrs. Eggleston
Naomi Rogers – 2nd Dough Girl
Richard Southgate – Brucey, Defence Lawyer, Schnitzler,
2nd Justice
Phoebe Sparrow – 2nd Girl, Number’s Woman
Katie Thomas – 3rd Val Girl
Imelda Warren-Green – 3rd Dough Girl |
Band
Dan Swana – Conductor & Keyboard 1
Sally Caldwell – Clarinet & Saxophone
Katy-Jane Cuthbert – Clarinet & Saxophone
Susanna MacDaniel – Clarinet & Bass Clarinet
Rachel Bull – Flute & Piccolo
Guy Passey – Saxophone & Oboe
Rebecca Cass – Saxophone
Trumpet – Joe Haig
Trombone – Faye Treacy
Keyboard 2 – Max Puller
Bass – Dan James
Percussion – Ashley Cooper
Drum Kit – Jaime Robertson
Production Team
Caroline Leslie – Director
Dan Swana – Musical Director
Karen McKeown – Designer
Lee Crowley – Choreographer
Sally Ferguson – Lighting Designer
Damien Ramsurn & Dan Swana – Additional Musical
Arrangements
Faith Butler – Company Stage Manager
Nicola Barrett – Deputy Stage Manager
Emma Connelly – Sound Engineer
Andrew Risk – Assistant Sound Engineer
Andrew Gibbons – Technical Assistant
Jade Chamberlain – Assistant Stage Manager
Rachel McDermott – Assistant Stage Manager
Kate Baldwin – Wardrobe Assistant
Emma Rowe – Wardrobe Assistant
Sophia Shillito – Wardrobe Assistant
Molly Woollett – Wardrobe Assistant
Damien Ramsurn – Head of Pastoral Care
Pascale Burgess – Pastoral Team
Jessica Haig – Pastoral Team
Peter Holt – Pastoral Team
Sam Sargant – Production Co-ordinator |
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In opting for something comic this
year the National Youth Music Theatre has revived this
wonderfully tongue-in-cheek musical adapted by Neil Simon
from Patrick Dennis’s devilishly funny fake autobiography
of a Hollywood star. The original was dedicated to 58 named
divas, from Arlene to Zsa Zsa, and gutted the genre rather
as This is Spinal Tap did for rockumentary.
Simon simplifies the rollercoaster career of the well-endowed
Belle Poitrine but as compensation the show mocks the artifice
of the stage musical itself. No rag number can ever have
been so raggish as the brilliant Rich Kids Rag, representing
the exciting world young Belle longs to enter. Choreographed
by Lee Crowley, the young singer/dancers of the National
Youth Music Theatre make its angular energy an early high
spot.
Cy Coleman’s music also parodies sentimental waltzes,
interminable deathbed arias and almost anything to do with
love, and in all these numbers, and the spoken dialogue
too, the cast ably point the joke while keeping a straight
face.
With 16 numbers and twice as many changes of scene, what
truly impresses me is that Caroline Leslie was given only
11 days to rehearse the cast. Some of the characterisations
are still raw, and the tempo sags for the middle of the
second half (though here the fault is Simon’s book),
but the complexities of ensemble playing seem effortlessly
solved as we follow Sarah Hagan’s Belle in her sweetly
ruthless climb to glory.
Since she is seen through the unreliable memory of her
older self (a suave Lucy Borne) Hagan’s playing emphasises
the sweetness in her very engaging performance. She can
do great things with her hips while continuing to look
the innocent throughout.
Joe Mott is an enjoyably roguish French singer but the
male star is Dom Hodson’s super-heroic Noble, Belle’s
true love, who utters his nonsensical lines with impeccable
gravity. “There’s plenty of room in the water,” he
announces, when an iceberg hits the S. S. Gigantic. A blissful
evening.
Jeremy Kingston, The Times, 30 August
2007 |
Again the NYMT achieve another production
with endless delights and talent aplenty. Hilarity ensues!
Little Me is quite simply an hilarious
musical complete with overacting, understatement, great
songs and so much fun. In the hands of the NYMT team
and Artistic Director Caroline Leslie Little Me becomes
more than the sum of its parts; an evening of endless
hilarity and outstanding performances from so many of
the West Ends next generation.
The show enacts the reminiscences of Belle, performed
in a Joan Riversesque style with endless imagination
by Lucy Borne, as she recounts the tall tales of her
life and many previous marriages over four decades. Having
over seventy named characters means the cast of thirty
five youths get stretched in many directions and all
enjoy numerous opportunities to shine and make an impression.
Sarah Hagen as Young Belle is worked hard and brings
a fine musical talent, vivacity and a captivating stage
presence to a cast already bursting with energy, ability
and enthusiasm. Sarah impresses in every scene and her
solo Poor Little Hollywood Star helps marks Ms Hagen
as someone to watch out for; Dom Hodson’s Nobel,
all buoyant humour and bright smiles, helps make his
endless supercilious arrogance an endearing quality;
Joe Mott as Val Du Val steals every scene, with a display
of comic stagecraft that belies his years and his Boom
Boom is one of many highs.
Even after a limited rehearsal period the cast handle
the choreography professionally and the dance numbers
look very impressive with the large cast obviously enjoying
themselves.
The NYMT continue to cast some of the most capable and
enthusiastic talents around and it is always exciting
watching these youths display skills that are already
impressive and will only improve. If they can carry the
electricity and passion they bought to Little Me, through
their careers then theatregoers have a treat in store.
While there will undoubtedly be many bigger budget revivals
of Little Me to come, but there will be few finer productions
than this one, as again Caroline Leslie brings the best
from the finest young musical talents around.>br>
Geoff Ambler, Reviewsgate.com, 3
September 2007 |
Patrick Dennis, author of “Auntie
Mame” and other novels, wrote “Little Me” in
1961. The book is a spoof celebrity biography of an alleged
star of stage, screen and television, one Belle Poitrine
(French for ‘beautiful bosom’) whose only
fame lay in her two pointedly outstanding talents. The
book, which is filled with faked photographs supposedly
of the rich and famous, takes the form of Dennis interviewing
Belle (née Maybelle Schlumpfert) about her eventful
life, and how she rose from being a poor girl born on
the wrong side of the tracks to become a lady of wealth,
culture and social position, through her various relationships
with the opposite sex. In Neil Simon’s adaptation
of the book there are seven men who play hero to Belle’s
heroine. In the original Broadway production of the musical
all seven parts were played by Sid Caesar, the famous
vaudeville comedian who became popular on television
through his “Show of Shows” programmes. Cy
Coleman and Carolyn Leigh’s musical of “Little
Me” was written in 1962 as a vehicle tailored to
Caesar’s comic talents.
Oddly enough it has always been successful when the
star was a television celebrity. In 1964 Bruce Forsyth
played it in London for a long run. Twenty years later
it was revived in New York without a TV star and flopped.
But in 1984 Russ Abbot headed the London revival to great
success. “Little Me” was the second show
to be written by Coleman and Leigh, who had had a previous
success with “Wildcat”, starring Lucille
Ball. “Little Me” is not a great musical,
although it did herald great things in that Coleman went
on to write “Sweet Charity”, “Seesaw”, “I
love my wife”, “On the Twentieth Century”, “Barnum” and “City
of Angels” among other shows. It also had Bob Fosse
as choreographer and he went on to do “Sweet Charity”, “Pippin” and “Chicago”.
“Little Me” is more of sketch show with
the leading actor doing a turn every time Belle gets
involved with a man, beginning with Amos Pinchley, a
wheelchair-bound octogenarian miser of a banker, and
moving on to a Chevalier-type French singer called Val
du Val, a First World War soldier called Fred Poitrine,
a Hollywood director, Otto Schnitzler, who may or may
not have been based on Joseph von Sternberg, and Prince
Cherney, the poor ruler of a middle European duchy. He
also plays Belle’s childhood sweetheart, the snobbish
Noble Eggleston, who goes to both Yale and Harvard, becomes
a lawyer and a doctor, is a First World War flying ace,
and wins an election to become governor of both North
and South Dakota; and also Noble Junior, his son and
chip off the block who studies at the Juilliard School
of Music and Georgia Tech to become the resident engineer
at Lincoln Center where he also conducts in the evening!
If it resembles a sketch show rather than a musical
proper, it does throw up some good songs that have become
standards: ‘The other side of the tracks’, ‘I’ve
got your number’, ‘Real live girl’, ‘Poor
little Hollywood star’ and the title song. They
are good, raunchy show numbers with bags of pizzazz.
That quality is needed in a cast for “Little Me”,
and here director Caroline Leslie’s young charges
go at it with enormous relish. There are lots of small
character parts for the company to get their teeth into
and it’s a good show for enthusiastic young performers,
such as these members of the National Youth Music Theatre,
to hone their skills in comedy and music. Sensibly all
the parts are shared out amongst the cast, so there is
no one person playing the seven leading men.
Ten years ago I saw the show at the Guildhall School
of Music and in that company was one Orlando Bloom. There
could be some budding Blooms in this company, too, and
certainly Dom Hodson who plays Noble has an obvious future
in the theatre. His is the best part, and the funniest,
and he really stands out as a person of promise. As young
Belle, Sarah Hagan expresses a suitably ingénue
innocence in the part, while Lucy Borne’s older
Belle is the epitome of the self-made woman. Joe Mott
as Val du Val provides more comic highlights, and Jack
Harrison’s dopey Fred Poitrine proves to be a crowd-pleaser.
But the company as a whole contributes a clutch of fine
comic cameos that bring the whole show back to cracking
life.
Michael Darvell, classicalsource.com |
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