“The Witches” by Roald Dahl
Nottingham Arts Theatre

The first of the Nottingham Arts Theatre’s “Play In A Week” run by their Summer School, and you just know, even before the play starts that these young children on stage are going to have an absolute blast with this play, and they did.

For a few years now I’ve had the pleasure of being invited down to review these plays and I’ve always marvelled at how fast these young people have learned and digested everything that they have created in less than one week.

They are like human sponges, and it’s lovely for me to go future “star spotting”. It’s also lovely to see who develops, going forward, into regular local actors, due to the love for acting they develop through this one week and the teachers who volunteers at the Nottingham Arts Theatre Summer School.

The Witches is a children's dark fantasy novel by Roald Dahl. The story is set partly in Norway and partly in the United Kingdom, and features the experiences of a young British boy and his Norwegian grandmother in a world where child-hating societies of witches secretly exist in every country.

The witches are all ruled by the extremely vicious and powerful Grand High Witch, who in the story has just arrived in England to organise her worst plot ever. But an elderly former witch hunter and her young grandson find out about the evil plan and now they must do everything to stop it and defeat the witches.

There were some really confident performances from these youngsters, plus some really good projection and character acting.They worked really well as a team and looked like they were having a ball, especially those witches!

Kezia Grundy (Grand High Witch), Essie Grundy (Grandma), Rhys Phelan/Se Phelan (Boy), Loren Hattachet (Narrator), Sophie Benner (Bruno Jenkins), Molly Benner (Mrs Jenkins), Courtney Ward (Mr Jenkins), Elsa Novak (Tree Witch), Zilpha Chisholm (Witch 1), Annie-Lucia Mowbray-Rees (Witch 2), Ava Barratt, Scarlett Coleman-Smith and Carmen Jablonska (Witches), Connie Hattachet (Waitress), Mack Afzak (Doorman/Head Chef and Puppeteer) and Rowan Arnold (Stage Manager).

Directed by Marie Rogers, who could add stand up comedy to her talents, if tonight was anything to go by. She made sure that everything ran smoothly, and apart from the odd prompt - I have trouble remembering my name sometimes, never mind a script - it all went to plan.

Marie's crew are Soleil Qu, Hope Wilkins, Rowan Arnold, Peter Hodgkinson, Emily Wilkins,Anna Wilczewskaand, Amy Rogers-Gee and Glenise Ellis.

This cast show what can be achieved in just a few days, and I hope that they carry on what they've started here, because there are youngsters here who show loads of promise, and should be proud of what they have done over the last five days.