ANYONE walking down the main corridor in the preceding week would have felt the excitement growing in the wings of this winter musical, before Once Upon a Time was unveiled to its first full house of the run.

The storyline, which tracks an archetypal journey from life to death, was beautifully narrated by Salvi De Sena, whose gesture and stage manner gave a personal and often humorous touch.

Interspersed between parts of this journey were a range of well-known songs from musicals, all which found their place seamlessly among the plot.

Seating upstairs provided a fantastic view from which to appreciate the choreography and colour of this performance, while downstairs, seating at tables allowed the audience to become even more immersed in the action on stage, which was filled throughout with wonderfully talented and enthusiastic performers.

All worked together as an excellent and unified chorus; both in terms of harmony and manoeuvre.

Within that, all singers contributed at least one solo moment, or took the lead in an individual number, and this was the most incredible aspect; the range and breadth of talent in the cast was unbelievable.

I was truly amazed by the maturity of the performances, particularly in pieces where the characters were so much older than the pupils themselves. This was especially true of Sophie Gamble, who began and ended the play so beautifully.

The band, led by Mark Cracknell gave added vivacity to each performance and each band member did an excellent job.

Special praise should go to Tim Waller, whose talent for sound creation, keyboard programming and playing gave a depth and sonority to the sound quality. Additionally, the lighting and sound, expertly overseen by Mr Waller, were really well handled by in-house lighting operator Egor Mayorov and assistant audio operator, Ummu Dasuki.

Every cast member deserve a mention. Particularly noteworthy though, I felt, were the Cooneys’ powerful rendition of I Believe, Heidi Parson’s Whatever Happened to My Part?, Rosemary Moss’ performance in Not Getting Married and Tom Dunn’s beautiful rendition of Bring Him Home.

My own highlight though has to be the encore, where the entire cast planted all their enthusiasm into the singing of and dancing to Rhythm of Life, bringing the audience to their feet, and injecting more sparkle and buzz into that theatre than I would have otherwise thought possible for a cold and dark December evening.

The biggest round of applause should be saved for director Fiona Baker – what a show!

By Rebecca Miller