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Rose Bruford College: BA (Hons) Actor Musicianship/BA (Hons) Acting

Published Wednesday 24 June 2009 at 16:55 by Susan Elkin

This was a refreshingly spiky showcase which really did show off the extraordinary versatility of many Rose Bruford students, managing at the same time to be a pretty entertaining hour’s theatre.

Because it merged the acting graduates with the actor musicianship students, there was plenty of scope in the showcase for musical numbers, well directed by David Zoob, Pat O’Toole and Iain Reekie, all accompanied by students on stage rotating between and among instruments and roles. It was also good to see a move away from the slavish monologue/duologue/solo song format, using instead a more flexible approach to actors and musicians supporting each other continuously. And that meant a more imaginative range of extract choices and numbers than usual.

Three cheers, for example to Pascale Whyte and Sam Ferriday for having a go at a very well-known interface from Pride and Prejudice, and to Aris Dimitri and Keshni Misha for offering two short extracts from Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Lolita. Misha is a multi-talented actor of warmth and charisma who is totally on top of everything she does. Her Lolita was eye-flashingly pert and her delightful and intelligent rendering of In These Shoes, a very funny song by Kirsty MacColl, highly entertaining. At other times she played violin continuo, vamped on amplified fiddle and played keyboards very competently.

Another very impressive all-rounder is Lauryn Redding. She and Jofre Alsina gave us that lovely bit from Moira Buffini’s Loveplay, in which he is a randy Roman soldier and she is a feisty British prostitute who isn’t going to be short-changed. Redding, who played this in her native Yorkshire voice to splendid earthy effect, made it funny, poignant and telling. I also loved her powerful singing of Somebody to Love, from We Will Rock You, along with, elsewhere in the showcase, her driving rhythmic saxophone playing. She is also pretty nifty on guitar and double bass, and has masses of stage personality. Watch out for Alsina too. As well as acting very competently with Redding, his classically trained baritone voice is both powerful and good to listen too. His compelling rendering of Sondheim’s Bring Me My Bride caused a spate of audience programme rustling and note-making. Alsina is also a strong keyboard player and handy on the double bass.

No one who saw Dana Gartland’s sensitive, funny and impeccably timed monologue from Buffini’s Loveplay will be surprised to learn that she has already landed a professional job, in this summer’s Globe Theatre Touring production of Love’s Labour’s Lost. I liked her carefully acted piece, with Martin Pratt, from Dennis Kelly’s After the End too.

And although Uriah Manning didn’t stand out particularly in his other appearances, his monologue as a hotel bell boy in Trevor Rhone’s Smile Orange was a comic showstopper. Few seasoned professional actors would tackle quite as many accents in such a short time and bring it off, but Manning made a hilarious theatrical cameo out of it.

Donna Preston is larger than life in every sense. Bigger even than Dawn French, she is very talented, with oodles of personality and probably has a future in character and comedy roles. No mean writer either, she wrote the very funny, dead-pan Beetroot (after the style of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads) and performed it with Russell Dean. And I enjoyed her fine alto-mezzo singing.

Of course, singing for musical theatre is a very different art from singing for a concert platform. Characterisation and plot development have to be convincingly knitted into the interpretation, something David Hewson does well. He gave us It’s Hard to Speak to My Heart by Robert Jason Brown in his attractive, well-modulated, high baritone. The words were crystal clear and the emotion nicely managed and controlled. All credit to his contrasting piece from Michael Frayn’s Here with Nina Quinn too. Both actors responded very warmly to the sparklingly funny, observant dialogue.

Tom Whitelock is commendably multi-skilled too, with a good tenor voice and proficiency on a range of instruments, including saxophone, electric guitar and piano. As well as providing assertive accompaniments to several numbers, he gave a warm performance with Mike Slader in a piece from How to Curse by Ian McHugh.

The rousingly rhythmic finale was a bit of a tour de force. Led by the Preston in tuneful, folksy mode with strong stage presence and by Pascale Whyte, another fine singer, the whole cast did John Fogerty’s foot-tapping Proud Mary, in which saxophone-playing Redding’s extra something shone strongly through as it did whenever she was on stage.

EXPERT CHOICE

James Berresford (Shepherd Musical Artistes)

• Dana Gartland

• David Hewson

David Bradbury (David Bradbury Associates)

• Donna Preston

• Tom Whitelock

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