"Flying High Expressive Arts Showcase 2024"

Bonington Theatre, Arnold.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I love watching showcases, for the simple reason of spotting the stars of tomorrow, and there were a few here that filled that category. There were also plenty who ticked the cuteness category.

The showcase also gave us chance to taste  Flying High's show that they are taking to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this year, which is "Wizard Of Oz", a show that they'll also be performing in December at the Bonington Theatre. 

The afternoon started off with one of the new songs from the production, written by Jack Quarton called "Just One Road" and gave us a taster from the Young Company at flying High.

It was then off to Neverland with a scene from "Peter Pan". Now I have no names of the cast but I must say that I did enjoy the young Captain Hook who through everything into the character.

Junior drama 1 presented a section from "The Wizard Of Oz" and highlighted, for me, two brilliant young actors. the young lady who played The Wicked Witch was exceedingly good, as was The Wizard himself, both these young people had great projection and had brilliant characterisation in their respective roles.

The junior Singing Group gave us a spirited rendition of "It's A Hard Knock Life" from the musical "Annie".

A quite alarming but highly entertaining piece of theatre was presented by the Intermediate Youth Theatre with a piece called "Z Is For.....", all about Zombies, which I particularly enjoyed.

Closing the first half was a very sublime piece of dance  called "Sweet Reverie" by the Youth Dance.

Opening up Act two were the Junior Singing Group performing a song written by Gary Barlow and Andrew Lloyd Webber, especially commissioned for Queen Elizabeth II, called "Sing". 

Up next was one of my very favourite highlights of this afternoon, a piece called "The Witches" by Roald Dahl; a piece about two young boys who had been turned into mice by a Witch. The two young actors who played the roles were Tyen and Romeon Tailor-Bird, who I remember fondly from Gedling's Got Talent earlier on this year. I loved what they did then, and I loved this piece. This pair have great confidence and character and made this piece of theatre brilliant fun.

Intermediate Drama brought us a thoughtful forward looking piece called "Login To The Future", and we were treated to another wonderful dance piece called "Out Of the Darkness", performed by Youth Dance.

The senior drama Group then treated us to a bit of murder mystery with a scene from "Cluedo", followed by another interesting monologue by Amy Cooper called "The Spider Men".

Closing the afternoon were the Senior Youth Theatre with an insight into "The Teen Brain".

There was a lot of new pieces in this showcase, which showed off the talented writing skills of the group, which I found very refreshing, because if you don't know what to expect, you concentrate more, and listen to the people on stage.

Unfortunately, many of the adults who had come to watch decided to disappear in the second part. Probably the reason being that their children had performed and decided that they did not want to stick around to see what everyone else were doing on stage, or support them, which I found to be quite disrespectful and rude.

The theatre was full at the start but by the time the last scene arrived, probably half of the theatre was empty, which was a real shame for the on stage performers, but those that left missed some really good, entertaining and talented people.

I certainly enjoyed the whole afternoon, and could see that there were many, many young rising stars who, in the next few years, could well be flying high on the wings of dramatic success.

Thank you Carrie for asking me along to this showcase.