Tag: young people

by Tricia Beddow

North West Theatre Arts Company – Phantom Memories

The new season at North West Theatre Arts Company, Lightbowne Rd, Moston is under way and what a great start!

Phantom Memories is set in a disused theatre that four youngsters find their way into. Dusty props, odd items of costume and pieces of faded scenery present a creepy, haunted atmosphere. They’re caught red handed by the ageing caretaker, Bud Berger, superbly played by the young Harry Gardner. They run off leaving one young lady behind.

Finding herself alone she curiously starts to sort through the dusty objects. Each one she touches conjures us up ghostly images taking her, and the audience, back in time as they perform their memories from past musicals.

NWTAC’s theatre school term started just 4 weeks ago and the cast represents the full range of students including the newest members and the most experienced. A month is not a lot of rehearsal time so it was ‘in at the deep end’ for the newbies. They did so well. Early nerves soon dissipated and everyone grew in confidence as the show unfolded.

The musical numbers showcased a variety of West End productions, big box office films and the best of Hollywood hits such as Jesus Christ Superstar, Grease, The Sound of Music, The King and I, Evita, South Pacific, The Wizard of Oz, Half a Sixpence and more. Something to suit everyone.

The full company kicked off with The Phantom of the Opera, closing the show two hours later with Born to Hand Jive and You’ll Never Walk Alone. In between we had solos, duets, comedy pieces and one or two cheeky numbers too.

Somewhere Over the Rainbow is one of my all-time favourites. It’s just ‘up there’ and Amelia Zatorska sang it so sweetly that I and the rest of the audience melted. Gareth Maudsley’s rendition of Flash! Bang! Wallop! was brilliantly energetic and I’m convinced he’s related to Tommy Steele. If You’ve Got It, Flaunt It by Maria Collins was soooo tongue in cheek it made us blush. James Llewellyn Burke nailed all of his numbers including Gethsemene and Madame Guillotine with real passion, matched by Solomon Asante-Owusu and Lois Ormerod’s ‘crime of passion’ with We Both Reached For the Gun.

All these numbers would have fallen flat without the brilliant staging and direction of the production team. It’s easy to overlook the skills involved. Some of dance routines were complex yet executed with precision and that’s a tricky challenge for such a large cast, so, well done to Choreographer Katie Gough. A total of 39 musical numbers must have left Bethany Singh, Musical Director, feeling very proud and rightly so.

This was the first of a season of 8 shows that NWTAC will perform over the coming months and the script was inspired: A lovely trip down memory lane. What can beat a live performance, close to home and it doesn’t break the bank to go and watch?

If you have never been to NWTAC’s theatre and don’t know what to expect this is a view of the interior with the show’s Director, Prab Singh in the foreground…

NWTAC are truly a talented group of people but don’t take my word for it. Go and see for yourself. Winter Wonderland, a variety concert to get you in the mood for Christmas, comes up next from the 18th to 20th November. See you there.

Details of all forthcoming shows, how to join the mailing list and book tickets etc., can be found on NWTAC’s website here, along with details of the North West Stage School.

You can also follow them on Facebook, just click here.

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by Tricia Beddow

North West Theatre Arts Company – Hairspray

They couldn’t have timed it better. NWTAC’s production of Hairspray started on 20th July just one day after Covid restrictions were lifted and it was a sell-out. Moston’s very own theatre at maximum capacity for the first time in 18 months.

For those who haven’t seen the film, Hairspray is set in Baltimore during the early 60’s where schoolgirl Tracy Turnblad dreams of dancing on The Corny Collins TV show. School doesn’t fit in with her plans so, along with her friend Penny Pingleton, she teams up with fellow African American students when they get put in detention. Together, they oust the reigning prima donna from the TV show along with her domineering mother and win the day.

Hairspray is a light-hearted, fun-filled musical with an underlying theme promoting tolerance and integration.

It also happens to be one of my daughter’s favourite films. She knows it inside out; every scene, every song, every dance move. So I was a bit nervous when I took her and the rest of my family to see the show.

Would NWTAC’s version measure up to the award winning film starring the likes of John Travolta, Zac Efron and Michelle Pfeifer?

Answer: they smashed it!

The casting was inspired. Annabelle Cooke bounced out of bed as Tracy with a bright and energetic ‘Good Morning Baltimore’. She was pitch perfect and I knew straight away we were in for a treat.

Eva Carty played Penny Pingleton perfectly while Jonny Molyneux had Tracy’s mum Edna Turnblad down to a tee. Jonny mustn’t have been available when they cast the film so they settled for John Travolta instead! He and his stage husband Gareth Maudsley have comedy timing in their bones.

James Burke followed in the footsteps of Zac Efron playing Tracy’s heart throb. He has a voice that just oozes confidence and rose to the challenge. Meanwhile, Penny’s love interest, Owen Omoruyi-Garci as Seaweed Stubbs, danced his way into her heart while his sister Little Inez (aka Elim Ghebrehiwet) sang her way into ours.

The TV ensemble was led by Anthony Horricks who carried off Corny Collins with professional smoothness. He and the station manager Velma Von Tussle (played by Melissa Grimes) and her daughter Amber (Kate Bannister) were superb.

In the West End, Marisha Wallace as Motormouth Maybelle was described as a show-stopper when she sang ‘I know where I’ve been’. I can only say that NWTAC’s Toyin Lawal, with her wonderful voice and elegance, was equally mesmerising.

Dance routines and songs just kept coming. Not once did anyone’s American accent falter. The full cast of 37 young actors and actresses who train at the North West Stage School did themselves, Beth Singh (Musical Director) and Katie Gough (Choreographer), Prab and the rest of the production team proud. It is such an elaborate show, packed with entertainment, humour and joy.

The past year and a half have challenged everyone but for this company to come through it all and produce a show as good as this is awesome.

My daughter, the whole of my family, loved it!

For all things NWTAC including future shows, professional theatrical training, their fantastic theatre summer school for anyone age 4+, Gap year theatre course, venue/set/costume hire and much, much more just follow them on Facebook and/or on their website where you can sign up to join the mailing list.

by Stephen OLoughlin

May Queen celebrations in working class Manchester

The celebrated folklorists Peter and Iona Opie, authors of ‘The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren’, describe crossing Manchester on a May Day in the 1950s and seeing children across the city taking part in May Day customs.

Until the mid-1960’s May Day customs were widespread in Manchester and Salford. They were of two kinds. One was Molly Dancing. The other was where young girls of a street, with assistance from mothers, would choose and dress a May Queen.

In 1983 an appeal for May Day memories appeared in the Manchester Evening News, what follows is based on the replies.

Mrs D. Thompson writing of her childhood in Longsight:

“We has a wonderful day on May Day. We would be getting things ready for weeks before, having rehearsals and trying on different clothes – out mother’s and fathers.

Girls that could get a white dress (few could afford one), would be the ones who would dance around the maypole.

We would put our names in a hat, and whoever was chosen would be May Queen, and we would dress her up on May Day. An old chair dressed in coloured paper would be her throne. The maypole, an old washing prop, also covered in paper and ribbons.

We has eight long ribbons coming from the top, and as the girls wound in and out round the pole, it would plat itself all down the pole.”

Helen Fedosijewski, born 1909 in Harpurhey recalled ‘The Maypole song’:

  • Around this Merry Maypole
  • And through the live long day
  • For gentle (girl’s name) is crowned the queen of May
  • Joy, Joy, Joy, dance and sing, sing and dance
  • We shall all have hearts so gay
  • Sing and dance, dance and sing, to make the woodlands ring
  • All around the maypole, we shall trot,
  • See what a maypole, we shall trot,
  • See what a maypole, we have got,
  • All our ribbons tied in a bow
  • All around the merry maypole
  • God save our gracious Queen (meaning our May queen, who was sat on a chair)

She continued “We also had a boy, a page, who carried the pole. We knocked on doors, and if we didn’t get any coppers, we didn’t finish the song, and went to the next house. We averaged about 11 pence each. The queen got a penny more, being dressed up in a lace curtain and white dress. All the mothers made paper flowers. It was WONDERFUL !”

Mrs B. Hodges wrote:

“Everything and everybody had to be in order. As the procession commenced, the whole retinue would knock at house doors.

The Queen stood between her two maids, framed in a ‘garf’, a wooden half-hoop, dressed for the occasion. When the householder opened their door, the May dancers would dance around the pole singing:

Cheese and bread, the whole cow’s head, roasting in a lantern. A bit for you, a bit for me, and a bit for the molly dancers.

The queen would be praised, a few coppers put in the box. We would say thank you, and move to the next house. The children enjoyed the planning and plotting. It was a happy time.

Each street had their May Queen, and there was rivalry to be the best. There would be three or four maypoles, from other streets, who would come round and knock on doors in our street – each one with their own Queen and dancers, But, ‘it was considered bad luck, to sing in a street where another May Queen was singing.”

This is an account describing Lowcock Street, Lower Broughton in the 1940’s:

“Great care was taken to get everything just so. It took many nights after school practicing in somebody’s back yard, so nobody from other streets could see. On May Day we would hurry from school, have our tea, then the great time would begin. One child carried a box for the money.

After we had collected our pennies, we would go to a back yard, and have a count up. Then there would be a party, cake, pop, crisps, sweets, biscuits – it was really something, and then we would have a concert, each child either saying a poem, or singing a song.

The Queen’s train would be carefully folded, and returned along with the brush stale and mother’s dress. If there was any money left, it was always shared out.”

Mrs H Thompson wrote of her own childhood in Gorton (1921-26) and her daughter’s in Reddish (1945-51).

‘There were about ten of us and we had quite a feast. Afterwards we would have an impromptu concert, with much giggling; boys hanging around the back yard door.”

Miss E. Chamberlain of Hulme included the words to five different songs, the last of which was:

  • “Last year we had a Maypole. It was a pretty sight.
  • And all the children in it, were dressed in pink and white.
  • With hearts and voices joining, Queen merrily reigns today.
  • For gentle (girl’s name), is crowned the Queen of May.”

The May Day customs occurred in the inner suburbs of Manchester and Salford, encircling the City Centre. From Hulme in the west, through Salford and across to Cheetham Hill, Collyhurst, Harpurhey, Moston, Newton Heath, and Gorton, to Reddish in the east, then south through Longsight, Ardwick and Chorlton on Medlock.

What strikes me is there was no involvement of schools or churches. The activities were street based, organized by the children themselves and passed from generation to generation.

When the Opies drove across Manchester on that May Day in the 1950s, they wouldn’t have been aware that the festivities they were witnessing, probably dating back to the Middle Ages, would have died out a decade later. The last account was from Rhodes Street, Miles Platting in 1966.