Chess by Performance Preparation Academy at the Electric Theatre, Guildford. Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩ Sometimes, but not often, a young singer displays such an awesome talent that it takes the breath away of even the hardest-to-please critic and, in Michael Vien, Guildford’s Performance Preparation Academy may well have unearthed a special one. […]
Tag Archives | Performance Preparation Academy
Performance Preparation Academy – The Pajama Game
The Pajama Game, performed by Performance Preparation Academy, continues at Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford until 15 June 2019. Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩ In a riot of colour, comedy and complex choreography, The Pajama Game sends PPA’s final-year graduates out into the real world with all guns blazing. The 1954 Broadway […]
Performance Preparation Academy – Made in Dagenham
Made in Dagenham was performed by Performance Preparation Academy at Eve Lyons Theatre, Guildford. Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩ In a week of total political chaos in Britain, the story of the strike by 187 female Ford Dagenham machinists 50 years ago that paved the way for the Equal Pay Act […]
Performance Preparation Academy – The Producers
The Producers by Performance Preparation Academy continues at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford until 9 June 2018. Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩ Mel Brooks’ outrageously camp and massively politically incorrect musical gives the PPA third years the opportunity to overact to their hearts’ content and don’t they make the most of it in […]
Performance Preparation Academy’s 10th Anniversary Gala – Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford
Performance Preparation Academy’s 10th Anniversary Gala – Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford. What a show the current crop of students put on to celebrate the tenth birthday of PPA and what a thrill it was to feel the love they and their predecessors who yelled encouragement have for this academy of excellence in musical theatre and […]
Performance Preparation Academy – 9 to 5 The Musical
9 to 5 The Musical by Performance Preparation Academy 3rd years continues at the Eve Lyons Studio Theatre, Guildford until 25 February. Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩ The Dolly Parton musical, based on the 1980 comedy movie of the same name, lasted less than six months on Broadway in 2009 and a […]
Performance Preparation Academy – Dames at Sea
Dames at Sea was performed by Performance Preparation Academy students at Bellerby Studio Theatre, Guildford. Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩ It took Dames at Sea 49 years to get from the 50-minute sketch with a cast of six at an Off-Off Broadway coffee house to a fully-cast Broadway premiere in 2015. […]
Performance Preparation Academy – Merrily We Roll Along
Merrily We Roll Along was performed by Performance Preparation Academy at the Bellerby Studio Theatre, Guildford. Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩ It’s quite a coincidence that the two biggest flops of Stephen Sondheim’s career are being revisited at the same time with Anyone Can Whistle, which lasted nine performances on Broadway […]
Performance Preparation Academy – The Life
The Life was performed by the Performance Preparation Academy at the Bellerby Theatre, Guildford. Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩ The quality of work produced by musical theatre students continues to amaze. In the same week as an outstanding Guys and Dolls by the long-established Guildford School of Acting was wowing audiences […]
American Idiot – Performance Preparation Academy
American Idiot was performed by final-year undergraduate students at Performance Preparation Academy at Bellerby Studio Theatre, Guildford. This review refers to the cast at the Saturday evening performance. Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩ Billie Joe Armstrong and Michael Mayer’s American Idiot lends itself well to theatrical adaptation in ways that differentiate […]
Performance Preparation Academy – Sweet Charity
Sweet Charity was performed Performance Preparation Academy final-year graduates at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford. Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩ Occasionally, very occasionally, you see somebody with ‘star quality’ stamped all over them and watching Natalie Thorn absolutely nail Sweet Charity was pretty special by any standard. This final show from the PPA’s […]
Performance Preparation Academy – Flashdance The Musical
Flashdance The Musical was performed by third-year students from the Performance Preparation Academy at the Electric Theatre, Guildford. This review refers to the performance on 26 February by the ‘Skin’ cast. Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩ Flashdance The Musical, Tom Hedley, Robbie Roth and Robert Cary’s musical theatre adaptation of Adrian […]
Performance Preparation Academy latest show is Flashdance the Musical
The third-year musical theatre students from Surrey’s Performance Preparation Academy (PPA) will be appearing in Flashdance the Musical at Guildford’s Electric Theatre next month. The production, which will be directed by Christopher Howell, with musical direction by Simon Lambert and choreography by Louise Pieri will play the Electric Theatre from 25-27 February. Based on the […]
Performance Preparation Academy – Cabaret
Cabaret was performed by Performance Preparation Academy at the Bellerby Studio Theatre, Guildford. Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ Musicals don’t come much better than Kander and Ebb’s masterpiece about Weimar Germany in the early 1930s, the rise of Nazism and the terrible price the Jewish race -– and the world – was about to pay. Friday’s […]
Performance Preparation Academy – Baby
Baby, performed by Performance Preparation Academy at Bellerby Studio Theatre, Guildford. Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩ Baby is a Maltby and Shire musical nominated for two Tonys in a modest Broadway run in 1984 but clearly regarded as too full of American schmaltz to make a successful transfer to the West End. It […]
Performance Preparation Academy – The World Goes ’Round
The World Goes ’Round: The Songs of Kander and Ebb performed by Performance Preparation Academy third years at Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford. Star rating: 4 stars ★ ★ ★ ★ You’d have to be seriously allergic to musicals not to enjoy this 32-song trawl through the genius of those Broadway giants John Kander and Fred Ebb, the team famous for Cabaret and Chicago […]
Performance Preparation Academy – Bring It On: The Musical
Bring It On: The Musical was performed by Performance Preparation Academy third-year graduates at the Electric Theatre, Guildford. Star rating: 4 stars ★ ★ ★ ★ Nobody is claiming the musical version of the Kirsten Dunst-starring Bring It On movie is great theatre nor is the subject matter, a high-school cheerleading competition in California, particularly attractive to British audiences. But […]
Bring It On: The Musical – PPA presents drama school premiere
Performance Preparation Academy’s third year Musical Theatre Diploma graduates are presenting the critically acclaimed Tony-Award-nominated high-flying drama school premiere of Bring It On: The Musical at The Electric Theatre, Guildford this week, from 5–7 March. Telling the story of a rival high school cheer squad, the musical first burst onto the Off-Broadway stage in 2011, later […]
Into the Woods – Performance Preparation Academy
Into the Woods was performed by Performance Preparation Academy’s Musical Theatre Diploma third-year students at Bellerby Studio Theatre, Guildford. After the contemporary Into the Woods at the Rose & Crown in Walthamstow, it is back to the traditional version of the great Stephen Sondheim musical (book by James Lapine) and a seriously good one directed by Performance Preparation […]
