Review: Barry Manilow’s Copacabana, Ryedale Youth Theatre, Milton Rooms, Malton

10:54am Friday 4th April 2008

STEPPING into the glitzy cabaret set of Copacabana, it was time to relax and enjoy the musical theatre world of Ryedale Youth Theatre, where "music and passion are always the fashion".

Relax and enjoy the audience certainly did during the run, as the huge, exuberant and confident company took us clubbing with the Copacabana opening number and amazed us all with an exciting song and dance introduction made stunningly colourful by the brilliant costumes.

The crescendo of festival colour and rhythmic harmonies continued and the talented young cast and disciplined chorus of dancing girls and boys sustained with uniform and considerable panache the high tempo, high energy and high standard throughout the Barry Manilow songs threaded through the romantic plot.

This show needs to be lively, the theatrical stereotypes need to be exaggerated, the choreography needs to be slick in order to reflect and enhance the music, and this production did all of this and more.

The ensemble playing of the principals was another great strength, and the humour of the stock characters emerged clearly too: star-struck heroine Lola (Elizabeth Haigh); love struck and resourceful hero Tony (Will Gosnold); disenchanted and droll ex-Copa Girl Gladys (Katie Stone); well-intentioned, but accident-prone impresario Sam (Oliver Tattersfield); his ruthless rival Rico (Benjamin Gill), plus his Latin lover Conchita (Hayley Milner).

The climax arose from the brilliantly choreographed chaos of the defeat of the villain - a scene that was both tense and amusing and followed the vivid creation of a variety of song and dance moods, such as joie-de-vivre tap dance at the Copacabana Club; the tension of audition; the romance of love; the entertainment of Latin dance; the anger of frustrated intrigue, jealousy and murderous passion and the happiness of reconciliation and success.

All this came across with the assistance of the young lighting and sound operators with admirable clarity and allowed for seamless transitions between scenes, which were complemented with brief musical reprises from the excellent musical director and his live band.

Such a feast to the ear and to the eye is difficult to create in any theatre.

To do so with a cast of 70 and in the modest confines of the Milton Rooms was a tour de force.

The show's assured complexity disguised many hours of dedicated rehearsal by the company and artistic vision from director/choreographer Angela Kirkham and musical director Martin Dixon.

- Trevor Boag

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