"Annie Jr" by Kristian Thomas Company

Duchess Theatre, Long Eaton.

With a perfect combination of street-smart and optimism, Annie warms the hearts of the audience as we witness her rise from next-to-nothing in New York City. She is determined to find her parents, who left her at the orphanage years ago with just a note and half a locket. However, things don’t quite work out the way she has planned with her constant efforts to escape the orphanage. She does however thwart the plans of the evil Miss Hannigan and find a new family with billionaire Oliver Warbucks, secretary Grace Farrell, and her lovable pooch, Sandy.

The Kristian Thomas Company has to be one of the best academies for a young person with artistic leanings. You just need to see the amount of people who are steadily climbing the ladder in drama who hail from this stable. These young actors in "Annie Jr" are already ascending those rungs.

Playing the lead role is Effie Lennon-Ballard who surprised me with such a wonderful, controlled set of vocals. There are some long notes that accompany the role of Annie in songs like "Maybe" and of course the song everyone knows "Tomorrow", and Effie nailed every note. What I also noticed was that she acts with her eyes, which shows that she completely believes the role she plays, and that is where a lot of the emotion comes from. A superb lead.

Playing the nasty Miss Hannigan is Grace Kolasa, and what a find this young woman is. She knows how to present and perform a song, not just sing it. The bitterness she puts into songs like "Little Girls", balancing it with comedy in her vocals is great to see and hear in an actor of these tender years.

Mr Warbucks is played by Finlay Lewis who smashed the role of being a billionaire, appearing more mature in years for the role. And what I also noticed as well was his feel for the choreography, especially highlighted in the second act.

Rooster, Aggie Hannigan's jail-bird brother, is played by Miles Potter. Yet again, another very competent singer, dancer and actor. He looks completely at ease on stage, and a lovely character actor. His vocals are strong and looks to have a natural dancing ability. You can tell when a young actor has this ability because you can tell when they think about the moves. Miles carried out the choreography without thinking once about the moves.

Lara Eyre plays Lily St. Regis, Rooster's latest flame. Another excellent character actor, especially with the character voice, as well as the accent, plus another with a feel for the choreography for this show.

Felicity Holman plays Grace, Oliver Warbucks' personal secretary. What a lovely refined piece of acting from Felicity, and she looks a lot older than her young age, which makes this particular character instantly believable. Not only is the acting refined but so is the dancing and the vocals, once more creating that more mature character for the stage.

Daisy Hamilton plays Mrs Drake, who is in charge of the staff at Warbuck's mansion. As with Felicity, there is an air of maturity and superiority that comes across with her character acting, separating the class element between the Hannigan clan and the Warbucks.

Molly, who Annie takes under her wing in the orphanage, is played by Imogen Satherley. I always think that it takes a great deal of guts to be the first person to actually deliver any dialogue on stage, but Molly wakes the orphans up with the nightmare she has just had at 3 am. And I also loved the accent as well.

Some young actors don't quite manage some accents but every one of them cracked the New York twang for me.

The other orphans are played by Izzy Gallagher, Sophia Ireland, Grace Hindle, Kodie Foxon, Imogen Ridgway, Isla Baskill-Conroy, Carly Hodgkins and Chloe Hale.

They say never work with children or animals, well there's no getting away with it in "Annie Jr" and Sandy, the lovable pooch, is played by Cooper. As expected, he won the cute award, which was pretty high with all of these kids on stage!

The NYC Ensemble and staff were played by Alfie Bridges, Amy Shelmerdine, Beatrice Bridges, Daisy Hamilton, Emma Finnigan, Felicity Holman, Freya Thomas, Isabella Tremaine, Nora Wheelan and Pip Blackman. And can I just say that the orphans and the ensemble really brought the choreography to life for me. the attention to little details in the choreography, like the turning out of the hands and the toe pointing were immaculate.

Directed by Alysha Gomes, although this was a "junior" version of the full length musical, there were no parts that stood out as edited parts; the whole flow of the play worked for this cast. Anyone who has seen the full version will see what has been left out to create the "junior" tag but there was nothing clunky about this show, or the direction at all. And excellent casting as well. I really liked the opening dance number where we also got to see the whole cast before the opening orphanage scene, and reminded me a bit of those old Hollywood movies.

Choreographed by Becky Wrench, who has worked with some very well-known artists in the past, and that experience has now been passed on to this cast. The choreography was just one of the highlights of this show for me.

Musical Director for this show is Sam Hedley, who has clearly worked these young actors hard to get the quality of vocal understanding and delivery we all heard on stage from this young cast. They've obviously taken in everything that Sam has taught, and have done her, and themselves proud in their performances.

Sound Operator for the show is Dave Dallard who balanced the sound well to make sure that everything was pleasantly audible.

Lighting Operator is by Stephen Greatorex, another expert at his craft.

Loved the costumes as well as the simple but extremely effective set, manoeuvred seamlessly on and off by the cast and the stage crew.

Brilliantly fun show which has a positive message of hope delivered by a wonderfully talented cast who are destined for big things on stage.

"Annie Jr" is at the Duchess Theatre in Long Eaton until Saturday 3 June.