Found

Found
Pelican Productions. Michael Murray Centre, Westminster, SA. January 11th – 19th 2020.

For the last 16 years Pelican Productions have held a very popular summer music theatre camp in South Australia.  The camp ‘creates an environment where young people can participate in music, acting, dance and stagecraft, intensive rehearsals and workshops’. Besides making new friends and having a heap of fun, a major output of the camp is the culminating music theatre show. This year they had so many camp participants, some from as far away as Darwin, that they have four separate troupes, performing two shows a day, over a four-day period.

Directors of Pelican Productions, Jen Frith and Kylie Green, have assembled some of the best that Adelaide, indeed Australia, has to offer, to provide guidance in vocal technique, dance and choreography to the enthusiastic participants. Combine that with a strong technical team and nearly one hundred youthful triple-threats and you can sit back and have a toe tapping, all singing, all dancing, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious night at the theatre.  

This year’s extravaganza uses the theme of ‘Found’ to combine a number of songs from some of our favourite musicals, new and old, into a show that runs for a little over one and a half hours.

Come from Away explores what happened in a small Newfoundland township when 7000 plane passengers suddenly found themselves being unexpected refugees following 9/11. The choreography is slick and uplifting, cleverly using tables and chairs to take us from town hall meeting to the cramped confines of an airplane fuselage. This is a fabulous ensemble piece that introduces us to the nature of the night ahead of us. However, it would be remiss not to mention Walter Buckley, Finn Green and Erin Sowerby as standouts in this medley; they captured the audience’s attention right from the start.

It could be considered a bold move to segue from the realism of Come from Away into pure fantasy. If that’s the case then it was a move that paid off for the talented cast of Mary Poppins. Ably led by chirpy Ariel Higgs as Mary and comedic Isla Campbell as Bert (doing a much better Cockney accent than Dick Van Dyke managed) we learn our rhyming slang, have a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious spelling lesson and find “the place where the lost things go”. The dance numbers are high energy and fun to watch, especially Maeve Higgs who is an absolute delight as Michael.

Six of the more senior girls take on Six, a modern retelling of Henry VIII’s six wives who were ‘divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived’. The musical is headed for Adelaide in June of this year. It involves the six wives competing for the role of lead singer of the group by demonstrating the most suffering at the hands of their husband. These young women look stunning in their modern-day courtesan outfits and as a group they vocally pack a high energy punch. Soloist Henny Walters as Jane Seymour gives a moving and heartfelt rendition of “Heart of Stone”.

Younger members of the camp are also given plenty of opportunities to showcase their talents with excerpts from Bugsy, Aladdin and Les Misérables. Maisy McCaig owns the stage and commands the audience’s attention when she takes on Bugsy’s “Ordinary Fool”. Also from Bugsy, “Fat Sam’s Grand Slam” is a whole lot of speakeasy fun and the Dance Troupe are outstanding. 

The Aladdin sequence is bright, busy and incredibly energetic. Young Amali Noble as Princess Jasmine, along with her courtesans, deliver “These Palace Walls” with a surety that defies their age. But it is Zoe Pool as Aladdin that steals this sequence. She performs with amazing vocal clarity and physical enthusiasm as she is quite literally chased out of the village.  

Les Misérables has always included children in the cast. However here the children take on some of songs normally sung by the adult members of cast. “Look Down” and “Do You Hear the People Sing” are performed with grit and gusto by these juniors; they make it seem easy.  Special mention must go to Amelia Trott as Cosette and her moving performance of “Castle on a Cloud”.

Eddie Perfect’s Beetlejuice and another Australian musical, Moulin Rouge, also get an airing. Walter Buckley is outstanding as creepy Beetlejuice and managed a wardrobe malfunction with the aplomb of a seasoned performer. Finn Green as Christian in Moulin Rouge is delightfully romantic, with all the right dance moves. Once again though, sassy Erin Sowerby really steals the show with “The Sparkling Diamond” medley. She’s got those good cabaret feels about her and seems to me to be destined for a life on the stage.
The evening is ended with the whole marvellous company on stage for “You Will be Found” from Dear Evan Hansen.

Directors Jen Frith and Kylie Green have found a wealth of talent in these young people. Hopefully their charges have found lifelong friendships, discipline, the ability to collaborate, graciousness, tenacity and humour from their endeavours to put on a show. Skills that will serve them well whether they pursue a career in the theatre or elsewhere.

Bravo to all involved, from the directors, the wonderful team of tutors, the tech team, the costumiers, but especially to the kids.

Jenny Fewster

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