By Imogen
Link: https://www.stream.theatre/season/91
Available until: Livestreams at 7.30pm Monday-Friday with a matinee on Wednesday at 3pm. On Saturday there are shows at 3pm and 8pm and on Sunday it’s 2.30pm and 8pm. The final shows are on Sunday 18 April.
The Musical Theatre Academy is a drama school in London which has been named Stage School of the Year twice. Something Old, Something New is a showcase for the graduating class of 2021 but all the students feature.
It was really hard for the 2020 graduates who have gone out into the theatre world to an industry which doesn’t exist at the moment. There has been lots of support and online opportunities but it’s not the same if you’ve trained for live theatre. The West End will be reopening from next month but not all theatres will open at once so it might be a while before everything is back to normal so I hope there will be support and opportunities for the 2021 graduates too. Actually all graduates should have extra support as it is a very difficult industry to break into. You need luck as well as talent. I’ve already broken into it but I’ve still got to do the transition from child star to adult star and a lot of talented people never do get to work in theatre.
The MTA 2021 graduates wouldn’t have had a proper audience but they have really helped their chances by putting it on a great show and streaming it on Stream Theatre who have featured some of the top West End talent over the last year. Last week on Stream Theatre I saw Sasha Regan’s famous production of The Pirates of Penzance and concerts from Blake Patrick Anderson, Layton Williams and Lucie Jones. This week’s shows include a musical called Disenchanted starring Six Queens Courtney Bowman (Anne Boleyn) Jodie Steele and Sophie Isaacs (both Katherine Howard) and Grace Mouat (all six Queens) and a concert from Danielle Steers (Catherine Parr). This proves that Stream Theatre is a great platform for MTA to stream their showcase on and hopefully they will get lots of casting directors watching.
Something Old, Something New doesn’t have a story but it does have a lot of old songs and a lot of new songs. It opens with a great performance of It Don’t Mean A Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing and there’s a brilliant performance of It’s A Hard Life by Queen. Then there are songs from musicals including Chicago, Once and Songs for a New World and if you know anything about musicals you should know there’s a big range of styles there.
Stewart J Charlesworth’s stage design is perfect for this sort of thing. It does make use of different levels which really suits some of the routines and lets the performers show they can go up and down steps without falling over but he has left lots of space for the routines that need to be on flat ground. Lucie Pankhurst is the director and she has been clever. She shows the students off but she also shows off the particular song and makes sure each song looks like a scene from the musical it’s from. This makes the scenes more interesting to watch and it also means the casting directors get to see what the singers would look like in a proper musical.
The choreography (most of it by director Lucie Pankhurst but with additional choreography from Alec Mann, Helen Siveter, Mark Smith, Simon Hardwick, Philip Joel, Jaye Marshal, Ali James and Jreena Green) isn’t that complicated but it’s the kind of thing where it’s really obvious if someone isn’t perfectly in sync and I didn’t notice any moments like that and I’d say if I did.
The music which was arranged by MD Annemarie Lewis Thomas is much more complicated, everyone sounded confident and in harmony. There were a few shrieky top notes but as it seems to happen to everyone above a certain pitch I would blame the recording equipment. It is very important to get good quality equipment so you can show your students at their best and that makes the drama schools look good too.
The standard is high and a lot of the students get to be centre stage, singing in a style that suits them. There are ballads, there’s high drama, there’s comedy. It’s hard to pick out students by name as they only got credited at the end and although we got clips of them performing there was no sound you can’t actually expect me to recognise which song it is which when you can’t actually hear the song. But I do remember Antoine Paulin and Matthew Cura and I think they showed particular talent. Nobody was actually rubbish, everyone was good.
It’s a great show full of high energy and high standards
and everyone should watch it especially if you’re a casting director.
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