Festival Time in Edinburgh

Soho 1953: a 6 storey tenement and a jazz club in the basement – the melting pot for immigrants from Jamaica, Italy, Greece, France and Russia.

Did you catch JAGS girls performing at the Edinburgh Festival, the world’s largest Arts Festival, in the Pleasance production Soho Storeys? The company of 60 including Naa Acquah, Katie Barrie, Daisy Gilbert, Athena Gupta, Rosie Joly, Alicia Manley, Ese Overo-Tarimo, Sacha Smith and alumnae Flo Cady and  Kate Craggs played to over 3000 delighted audience members. Extracts from the rave reviews follow. Photos by Daniel Swerdlow.

****British Theatre Guide

This accomplished jazz musical by the Pleasance’s Youth Theatre is an absolute gem. The large talented company brilliantly captured the spirit of the era with polished performances, sparkling choreography, beautiful, glamorous period costumes and an effervescent musical score played by a great sounding jazz band.

The highly inventive multi levelled set that the cast wheeled around with great precision created the various flats. In the attic there was the family from Jamaica including Tyrone, who sings in the jazz club in the basement where we have glimpses of life both backstage and front of house. All manner of cultures are represented in this multicultural community; the Greek barber, the French sisters running a patisserie and the two Russian Jewish tailors.

In a series of witty, comic and dramatic vignettes we learn about their lives, their tensions, their quarrels, their relationships and their love affairs but there is not enough time to explore these sub-plots in depth which was a pity. The exuberant cast sing and act with both conviction and panache and the ending chase and fight was a tour de force. This was youth theatre at its best.

Huge plaudits must go the direction team of Tim Norton, Kathryn Norton and choreographer Neil Fisher, as well as Ned Bennett and Ajantha Chandrasena, the musical directors for putting together a slick, imaginative and enjoyable show.

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