Bonus Godspell Review

Never reviewed a show before but thought I am reviewing everything else so what the hell. I went to see the show ‘Godspell’ performed at South Hill Park produced by the Artemis College group. The show itself was a short hour-long edited version of the show/movie from 1973. There was no intermission or much of a story to follow as it was intro-song repeat until the conclusion. Having a little knowledge of the situation would help and for me the only criticism of the show is one of the directors could have introduced the show and perhaps given a summary and thanks to everyone that worked on the show. As well as the audience who had brought tickets in August and then didn’t know what was going on. That aside the dancing and singing were top draw throughout there wasn’t a negative among them. I have seen shows at the same location before and you can tell the ‘not as talented’ as the rest of the cast who gets one or two solo lines of a song to be able to be named on the programme. The par level for this crew was across the board the dancing was great, but this was topped by the singing.

Every single note was hit to perfection and since this show had become a concert rather than the planned theatre production making the songs – the show they had to nail it to make it worth it. Rest assured they did. Having seen Keir Buist and Connie Burgess in other productions I was aware of their singing talents and was fully aware of how well they always perform. I am trying to convince myself that I’d seen Alexander Stephanou before as he had the unenvious task of opening the show with the first song. It took some spirit to kick things off with people sat inches from you and he delivered.

I am going to finish off with explaining the history of the production and single out four member of the cast. Two excellent solos of note from George Oakley and Anoushka Tandon-Sangar who both were under used in this shortened performance. Isabel Kardos-Stowe who had a hand in everything from singing, dancing as well as playing the double bass for another solo. Out of the exceptional cast there was one individual who stood out a star among stars (as it were) and that was Caitlin Edmondson who had me believing that she believed every word said and that she spoke. Her singing was perfect, and she shone brightest on a night of stars, fantastic and it should mean a successful career is ahead of her.

To explain why this show was cut down to an hour and ran straight through for an hour. I had my tickets for the show in the amphitheatre on the side the hill of South Hill Park. I had four tickets and was all ready for a full show in August. Then the pandemic struck the cast and one by one they dropped, and the rest of the cast and crew had to isolate. The day before moving to South Hill Park. The show was shelved if not cancelled. Ideas were banded about but nothing that fitted logistically. Eventually I was contacted by South Hill Park to give me the option of waiting for a production to go on or to take my money back. I would wait. Until the last week of October where the show was to go on at SHP as planned but indoors rather than in the October night air. The cast had literally a day and half to pull the show together forcing cuts to show and a dramatic cut to the running time. Nearly half the original plan. What was left was the songs and the introductions which from the audience point of view left a story that was extremely hard to follow and making little sense, almost impossible if you didn’t know the source material. I had deliberately avoided it to stop one influencing the other. So, nope, I didn’t have much of a clue I’d pieced together a loose version of the story of Jesus set in the seventy’s and that was about all I could grasp. Did that affect my enjoyment of the talent on show? No! Not in the slightest as all the performance was top draw. My comments above were sincere they were fantastic and a credit to the dedication and challenging work that they all put it. Pulling this back together in a day and a half is amazing and that deserves all the credit heaped on them.