HELP! Get Me Out of This Musical was performed by Youth Music Theatre UK at the Wilde Theatre, South Hill Park Arts Centre.
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
With book and lyrics by John Nicholson and music by Alexander Rudd, HELP! Get Me Out of This Musical tells the story of school bully Callum MacGregor, who finds himself mysteriously trapped in a world in which characters launch spontaneously into elaborate song-and-dance numbers with alarming frequency.
Ten years in the making, the deliciously witty show draws upon a rich heritage from Grease to High School Musical in recounting its tale of a teenage bully cut down to size. As it unfolds, the plot escalates beyond the improbable – but that’s the point. And if the conclusion seems largely predictable, it is no less appreciated on that count alone.
Like many of Youth Music Theatre’s ventures, the strength of this production, ably directed by Luke Sheppard, lies in the ensemble. Kitted out near-identically in matching HELP! T-shirts, the cast members gel extremely well together, and one gets the distinct impression that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, assisted in no small measure by Julia Cave’s spectacular choreography.
The role of Callum is divided between two actors, Joe Riley and Théo Marceau, who, somewhat confusingly, have completely different appearances and accents. Riley as Young Callum shines as a versatile dancer and reluctant participant in the musical routines from the first fully-fledged song, ‘Where Have You Been?’, for which he supplies some entertaining vaudevillian interjections.
Complementing Riley’s enacting of the story is Marceau as Old Callum, who narrates the action; their duet in Act II, although brief, is particularly well-judged. Playing opposite Riley, Grace Maltman presents a suitably sympathetic yet vulnerable love interest as Becky, and comes into her own during Act II’s ‘I Need To Know’.
Many other cast members are given their moment to excel as individuals in the course of the show. To cite just a few examples out of many, Emily Gibson portrays a wonderfully eccentric, Mary Poppins-like headmistress; David Mariani convincingly lip-synchs to a female vocalist singing from the wings as the priest during the wedding sequence; and Callum’s gang, the trio of Joe Simmons, Harley Emmitt, and Tom Jocham, offer various superb touches throughout.
I would not wish to sell Rudd’s outstanding score short by describing it as pop-rock, since it incorporates a wide range of popular styles from samba to ballad (the latter yielding a tongue-in-cheek mention of YMT patron Ed Sheeran). In addition to the five-piece pit band directed by Adam Gerber, some judicious use is made of onstage acoustic piano and drum box enabling a more intimate, stripped-down accompanimental texture.
A humorous Hamilton reference appearing early in the show is the first of many instances in which blockbuster musicals are teasingly referenced. Multiple occurrences in the Act II opener, ‘Imagine a World’, are followed by a whole song sending up Les Misérables. There is even an inexplicable cameo from My FairLady’s Professor Henry Higgins, which sees Catriona Judd deliver a fine performance.
It is a pity that, unusually for a YMT production in my experience, the cast list supplied in the programme does not identify the roles played by the actors, such that individuals do not receive credit for the unique part they contribute to the success of the show. Similarly, the song list provided falls short of indicating the performers involved in each number.
Inevitably, on opening night some of the cast demonstrated one or two signs of nerves, occasionally speaking just a little too fast for their lines to carry effectively to the back of the theatre. The situation was not helped by there being a few too many balance issues for my liking, in consequence of mics not being turned up to a suitable level at the appropriate moment.
But that takes nothing anything away from the evident fun collectively being had by the young cast of HELP! Get Me Out of This Musical, whom Nicholson describes in his programme note as “disgustingly talented”. On the strength of this impressive performance, I am inclined to agree.
Christopher Wiley
SHARE THIS POST:
Comments are closed.