“Songs For A New World” by Jason Robert Brown

Musicality: University of Nottingham

Trent Building, University Park.

 

As Brown says, It's about one moment. It's about hitting the wall and having to make a choice... or take a stand... or turn around and go back. These are the stories and characters of today, the Songs for a New World. The first musical from Tony Award winner, Jason Robert Brown, this is a moving collection of powerful songs that examine life, love and the choices that we make.

 

This musical takes you from 15th-century Jews fleeing Spain for the New World, to the Bronx and a young man dreaming of being a famous basketball player, to a woman out on the ledge of her Manhattan high-rise apartment building, to a chronically unsatisfied Mrs. Claus, this complex show comes at this same human experience from all angles, from people in different times and places, but all of them facing some new world. And how apt are these stories as we approach the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel into a very different “new world”

 

The cast consists of just four actors playing all parts. Marie-Laure Corben, Evie Mace, Katie Dart and Sam Hook's voices combine deliciously, and you can hear the hard work that has gone before with these harmonies. Harmonies that Brown is so well known for. And the emotion in songs like "I'm Not Afraid Of Anything" is matched well by the comedy in the lyrics of songs like "Surabaya Santa", wonderfully performed, not just sung, by this quartet. I really could not pick out any highlights for the simple reason that all the performances were of the same high level.

Musically you can be listening one minute to a South American rhythm, the next a gospel-tinged piece, the next something jazzy, something that I am sure Musical Director, Maddy Telford, revelled in. Along with pianist Annabel Jeffries, the pair created a simple but stirring musical back drop to the blending of the four voices.

Produced by Fiona Cook, assisted by Meghan Borg, they complete the talented team with Paolo Elias who did a marvellous job directing this production.

The need for no set is a deliberate one so that we can concentrate on the voices, messages and delivery as well as the lyrics of Jason Robert Brown.

I will admit to being a big fan of Jason Robert Brown since I first saw “The Last 5 Years”, many years ago, and have tried to attend as many of his works performed locally as I have been able to. This is one that, until this evening, I had not ticked off the list, and it was worth waiting for.

Away from the production itself, it was just really nice to see some of the faces from the University that I had not seen for the last sixteen months and to chat to them. I have always extolled the talents of Musicality and I know their combined work ethic and the results have always been spectacular, even in a stripped back production as this one. Whatever they do, they seem to have the Midas touch, and long may it continue.

Musicality’s two NOTT Fringe shows, “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” and “Songs for a New World”, will be showing this week in the Performing Arts Studio in the Trent Building on University Park Campus until 15 August.