"Break a leg" is a traditional theatrical expression used to wish performers good luck before they go onstage.
In this play, by Judi Billcliff, it’s part of the name of the Bafta Awards — Break’ a’ Leg Academy For Talented Amazing Superstars.
Young performers April Kerr, Ariel Holloway, Connor Broadhead, Echo Beres, Hannah Feremor, John Lindley, Freja Thatcher, Jake Harris, Elizabeth Dearden, Jasmine McPherson and Rosie Mitchell take on multiple roles in a range of categories including dance, Western, horror, comedy and Shakespeare.
Everyone gives it their best shot, and the result is a sequence of entertaining scenes.
My favourites included a win-or-lose show, a high-noon encounter enhanced by old-fashioned use of coconut shells to represent horses’ hooves, and a final Hamlet scene that Shakespeare most certainly did not write.
The many required scene changes are carried out quickly and efficiently. Mostly the performers wear black pants and coloured T-shirts, and in most scenes this is adequate, but occasionally more elaborate costumes appear.
Mood is imaginatively enhanced by lighting designed by Dylan Shield and sound by Louisa Stabenow, Harry Almey and Thomas Makinson.
Perhaps inevitably, performer experience and abilities vary, but enthusiasm, energy and commitment are evident throughout.
The target audience is likely to be secondary school students, but there is something for everyone to enjoy.
The season will run until Saturday.
Directors Harry Almey and Kay Masters, producers Rosemary Manjunath and Lorraine Johnston, and everyone else involved can be proud of this promising beginning to the theatre’s new Globe Youth Theatre project.
Review by Barbara Frame
