Hoodwinked

by Margaret Carpenter

A musical romp based on the story of Robin Hood and performed by our youth members. This highly entertaining adventure will have audiences booing and hissing with gusto!

Show Stoppers!

Breath-taking performances of songs from your favourite West End musicals by our youth members aged from 14 to 17.

Daily Echo Review of both shows by Linda Kirkman:

NFP has always ensured that its younger members have their turn in the spotlight, so what better way for the company’s week of 80th birthday celebrations to begin than by showcasing the talents of those youngsters.

The very youngest, from 9-14, performed Hoodwinked, a musical romp based on the story of Robin Hood. Some were seasoned performers, for others it was their first time on stage, yet all bubbled with infectious enthusiasm and made this a thoroughly enjoyable entertainment. They did themselves proud, not least the main characters Robin Hood (Art Gosling), Sheriff of Nottingham (Jack Haberfield), Maid Marian (Lara Powell), The Deputy (Tali Broadhurst) and The Narrator (Laura Cantegreil).

Next came Show Stoppers, in which a dozen 14-17 year olds strutted their stuff with enviable confidence as they sang a selection of songs from shows both familiar and unfamiliar, directed by one of their number, Connor Miller.

I wasn’t too keen on the 'mood lighting' that sometimes left faces in semi-darkness, but there was no doubting the extraordinary talent within their ranks. And how refreshing that they had sought out several less well-known numbers too, rising to the challenge of the likes of Sweeney Todd’s Epiphany.

With youngsters like these, NFP’s future is assured.

Two Summers

by Gillian Plowman

A touching love story across the years

The Dental Surgeon & Swansong

by Anton Chekhov, translated by Elizabeth Gamberoni

Two short comedies from the Russian master:

The Dental Surgeon

Vonmeeglazov, the local Sexton, arrives at the village hospital with raging toothache, only to find that the regular surgeon is away on his honeymoon. So it falls to his arrogant but incompetent assistant Kooryatin to extract the offending tooth. The Dental Surgeon contains much knock-about humour and physical comedy that will have audiences in stitches. However, it still provides some interesting social history by indicating the appalling conditions of Russian hospitals in the 1880s. Not to be missed.

Swansong

Svetlovidov, an aging but once great actor, wakes up all alone in a darkened theatre having fallen asleep in a drunken stupor after a farewell performance. He looks back over his life and together with the prompt-mistress (who it turns out has also been sleeping in the theatre) re-lives some of his former triumphs. This is a touching and poignant tragicomedy that may bring a tear to the eye. It was performed by Sir John Gielgud during the war.

Daily Echo Review of all three shows by Linda Kirkman:

NFP’s 80th birthday celebrations moved into their second night with three very different short plays.

Gillian Plowman’s Two Summers, set in 1930s Singapore and 1970s England, explores the relationship between a Colonel’s wife (Alison Trow) and a piano-playing Sergeant (Matthew Walker) in a novel way that involves an elderly couple (Sonia Collyer and Adam Ogilvie). This touching story, well paced by director Judy Spooner, was beautifully performed by its cast, which also included Clive Rigden as the Colonel.

This was followed by two Chekhov plays, both directed with skill by P J Stevens. The first was the decidedly weird The Dental Surgeon, in which a vodka-fuelled Medical Orderly (Tim Schuler) attempts, and fails, to remove a tooth from a terrified sexton (Matthew Ellison) as the housekeeper (Georgette Ellison) offers her own advice. Brilliantly performed and extremely funny - definitely Chekhov in lighter mood - it probably put most of the audience off dentists for life.

Finally came Swan Song, a real tour-de-force for the very talented Matthew Ellison, in a tragic-comic tale of an elderly actor, poignantly dressed as a clown, who on the eve of a benefit performance finally acknowledges that the audience love only the character, not the real man.

Monsieur Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Qur'an

by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt

Thought-provoking rite of passage set in Paris.

We ask you, the audience, to suspend disbelief and create for yourselves the world in which the characters live. The relationship between the Arab — Monsieur Ibrahim and Moses — and the Jewish boy is very sweet without being saccharine. The bond that develops between them is central to the play.

We hope that you will leave with the belief that being different is a source of joy rather than a reason for conflict.

Fresh Oysters

by Tony Powell

Hilarious romantic comedy set in Moscow.

Charles Radcliffe is on a mission: to fulfil his deceased mother's peculiar final wishes, he has to scatter her ashes on Chekhov's grave in Moscow. But how to do this without attracting undue attention? Charles has devised a cunning plan inspired by the film The Great Escape, and in carrying out his plan is thrown romantically together with a very loud American lady who also happens to be visiting the cemetery. A complex plot involving Russian hotels, a variety of strangely behaved waiters, and suspected drug smuggling ensues!

Daily Echo Review of both shows by Linda Kirkman:

The final offerings in NFP’s week of 80th birthday celebrations proved to be well worth waiting for, and further served to prove what a huge amount of talent there is in this group.

Gillian Pitt directed the first play, a most unusual piece set around a young Jewish boy, Moses, who has been abandoned by his family, and an Arab shopkeeper who befriends and subsequently adopts him. Both characters were sensitively and touchingly played by James Cole and P J Stevens, creating a genuine sense of closeness that was heart-warming to watch.

Fresh Oysters was another play new to me, and it held me enthralled from start to finish. This quirky comedy, well directed by Sonia Collyer, was set in 1970s Moscow amid the meeting of Londoner Charles Radcliffe and American Samantha Wise, both of whom have somewhat unusual reasons for visiting Chekhov’s grave and resulting in one of them almost landing in prison.