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| Edinburgh : A&E : Festivals : Fringe Reviews |
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 Musicals & Opera |
Rating Guide Drams  .Venue Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33). Address 60 The Pleasance. Reviewer Thelma Good. Set in the years leading up to the General Strike of 1926 Tim Norton's book based on an original idea from Christopher Richardson and Ned Bennett's music and lyrics has given Young Pleasance a vehicle well tuned and turned out to shine on, or maybe that's two vehicles. For during the Musical various set items are deployed in a variety of ways against the backdrops of Oxford colleges. (the skyline is a particular delight), Bloomsbury and London bus works until, to the surprise and delight of the audience, a old fashioned bus with the twirly stairs is brought together and then moved! Sung to a live orchestra and with well detailed choreography by Neil Fisher this musical and its young talented cast, directed by Tim Norton, deliver the kind of show you'd happily see more than once. Anna Watts is a bright young girl with a scholarship to Oxford, she leaves her orphaned brothers, one a bus mechanic, arriving a completely different world. At first she's looking in from the edges but it's her understanding of the use of an adjustable spanner that attracts motorbike mad The Hon. Stephen Fox. Anna finds herself in the centre of a fairly fast and fashionable set. Stephen's a typical upper-class but loveable twit, but his Mum is a revelation, a radical toff who gets her maid to help her on demonstrations. With a huge cast who all deliver it's not fair to mention names but I will be looking out for all of them in years to come. And the musical? It could have a professional production containing as it does a story worth investing in, populated with engaging people from the working class intellectual Peter "Thinker" Baker to the gloriously eccentric Oxford tutor. Bus! The Musical © Thelma Good 19 August 2005 - Published on EdinburghGuide.com Runs to August 20 at 15:00. Company – Young Pleasance. Company Website www.pleasance.co.uk
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