Halls – Turbine Theatre

Picture: Danny Kaan

Halls continues at the Turbine Theatre, London until 30 July 2023.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

For a production that’s apparently in its ‘development’ stages, Halls, at the slightly claustrophobic, but endearing Turbine Theatre, is a highly promising piece with enough youthful energy to keep the National Grid going for a good few months. Usually, the mere mention of a ‘work in progress’ is enough to set off creative alarm bells, but this joyful musical, centred around the pleasures and inevitable pains of starting life at university, away from parents and home, packs in a whole lot of pretty impressive numbers, both solo and ensemble.

Following four well-received workshop readings last May, the creative team behind the production felt that the Turbine Theatre was the ideal space for this new work to be tried out, allowing them to continue to work on the material and fine-tune it during its run. That looks to be a very sound decision.

Written by Jennifer Harrison and George Stroud, directed by Andy Fickman and produced by Paul Taylor-Mills and Charles Severs, the show follows eight fledgling students over the course of the academic year, exploring the relationships they form, as they learn to live together experiencing student life – all having been allocated Flat 15B in the halls of residence. For those older members of the audience who have already experienced the joys of flat-sharing at college, the memories come flooding back – the arguments over whose turn it is to do the washing-up, which culprit used the last drop of milk and writing your name on your eggs in the fridge in felt tip pen!

Certainly, the first 30 minutes of Halls is among the best I’ve seen in a fair while at a Fringe musical and with catchy songs like ‘First Impressions’ and ‘Never Have I Ever’, the production is off to a flier. Key is the pretty much perfect diversity of characters – ranging from the cocky, self-assured, womaniser Josh (played perfectly by Lenny Turner) through to the delightful, funny and impressive Jessie, the much-travelled spoilt little rich girl, whose idea of personal tragedy would be missing out on a skiing holiday. In the role, May Tether is flawless and funny throughout.

All the initial campus camaraderie, of course, is inevitably tempered by the harsh realities of life. Will, painfully shy and totally naive, played with credibility by Jacob Dachtler, is under serious parental pressure to perform academically while a false alarm over a young pregnancy creates emotional chaos. Later, there’s genuinely moving moments of confused sexuality. When Sam sings ‘A Little Hard Work’ – an emotional, somewhat sad admission of what life probably has in store for her – it’s just one musical highlight of many and much to Kelly Sweeney’s credit that she pulls off such a demanding number with utter confidence.

On the down side, with Act I running to over an hour, it was a shame that after the interval, the joyful effervescence the cast had worked so very hard to establish then dissipated somewhat. Thankfully, ‘Swipe Right’ – a finely executed all cast number about mobile phone dating – picked up the pace again, but you sensed the audience’s interest was starting to wane. In short, the show’s too long.

As the students get set to move to different accommodation at the end of term and move on with their lives, Halls well that ends well.

Cut down, there’s no doubt this production has the potential to succeed. It could and can be fully developed into a little gem of a musical. Its talented young cast and creative team deserve it to themselves to make that happen.

Derek Smith