Review: We’ll Meet Again, Upstage Centre Youth Theatre, The Theatre @ 41 Monkgate, York

1:38pm Monday 10th March 2008

DANIEL Bye, new part-time artistic director for this renamed company, brings to the stage his first show, We'll Meet Again, billed as "the most ambitious the company has ever attempted".

The play was devised and developed by the director and his young cast of eight to 13-year-olds, several of whom had never been on stage before.

Yet their performances were professional, credible and very entertaining.

The drama traced the journey of a group of Second World War evacuees to the small Buckinghamshire town of Bletchley - at the centre of British attempts to crack enemy codes during the war.

This suggests a concoction of themes - friendship, fear, betrayal, national identity, wartime and plenty more - aided by simple yet effective sets and period costumes, along with stimulating and at times unnerving sound effects.

Also adding to the atmosphere was the nostalgic wartime music, then highlight being the cast's performance of Vera Lynn's classic We'll Meet Again.

The play was, in a nutshell, "a comedy, a tragedy, a modernist theatrical experiment and a serious drama".

- Heledd Williams

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