• Nomad Groups, Nomes News, Reviews

    Posted on July 4th, 2010

    Written by Charles

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    name-smallestNina Holmes, Kate Raye, Helen Burden, Steve Geraghty and co do it again!

    What a mass of talent we have at our disposal. Of course, the audience was mainly comprised of proud parents, aunts and uncles and siblings who booked early and prevented regular patrons from getting tickets (a lesson to us all there). Of course, too, they were there in large part to cheer on their own participants but, believe me, this show would not have disgraced any Nomad audience.

    About 60 Nomes, aged from seven to 15, mostly playing several parts, sang, danced. mimed, gagged and entertained us. Two complete casts, each performing twice – a mammoth effort. The singing and choreography was first rate. I nearly stood to cheer at the wild exuberance of It and the finale where the whole cast, liberally smothered in “splurge”, slowly returned to life as little Busy began slowly on We could have been anything that we
    wanted to be, with the whole cast joining in for a rousing climax which had the audience rocking and rolling with them. But the big production numbers contrasted with the plaintiff ‘Tomorrow’ beautifully danced and sung by Busy and one one of the dancers.

    What is a splurge gun?

    Answer – a tommy gun which discharges a stream of bubbles to devastating effect. These were designed and made by David Martin – is there no end to his talents? I understand that, not only did David save the Company
    a great deal of money, but the ones he made for this show have already been sold to another company for a further production. I loved the disposal of the numerous corpses, carried off completely rigid (how did they avoid
    sagging?)

    The Chicago mob-Italian accents were impeccable although there was a slight tendency to speak too fast for clarity in one or two cases. Both the Pins and Stripes teams suffered one small disadvantage – in both cases
    Bugsy’s saviour, Leroy Smith, was played by the smallest member of the cast and I would have thought that a taller, broader lad might have been able to represent the amiable, talented but slow-witted prize fighter rather
    more effectively. But what a small niggle. Costumes effectively portrayed the wild side of the Lower East Side, the dancers were sexy (and could dance!). As usual Helen (with a lot of work from everyone) had come up with a colourful revolving set against a backdrop of the Stars and Stripes and the St a t u e of Liber t y Torch. Q u i t e rightly N i n a g i v e s e ve r yone she can a p a r t and it is t h e r e f o r e inevitable that a few stood out from each production due to age and previous experience. But I was amazed at how well the smallest members matched the old stagers in enthusiasm and skill if not, occasionally, in power.
    The band of keyboards, drums, bass and trumpet never put a foot (or a note) wrong.

    A truly wonderful experience.

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    This entry was posted on Sunday, July 4th, 2010 at 12:29 pm and is filed under Nomad Groups, Nomes News, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
  • 1 Comment

    Take a look at some of the responses we've had to this article.

    1. Craig
      Oct 22nd

      I WAS BUGSY =D

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