Musicals Reviews: Wow! What A Year!

This latest offering from Edgy Productions addresses head-on the bizarre and extraordinary experiences of young students in the past year. Featuring all the key topics: home-schooling, panic buying loo-roll, baffling and constantly changing government edicts, and, of course, Captain Tom, the show is a romp through these stranger-than-fiction shared experiences, with catchy songs and comedic sound effects, but also with heart.

The show is structured around a set of ‘continuity scenes’ in which a teacher and their class discuss the experience of lockdown, with mini scenes being acted out. Each scene ends with a student-friendly song, and this is material that should be easy to mount with the whole year group. There are 50 speaking parts, although the book of the show provides comprehensive guidance for teachers, including tips on how to make the cast smaller or larger, as well as advice on use of space.

Musical highlights include ‘Captain Tom’ which is good fun with a hint of hoe-down, but ends with a touching reference to the fact that the hero of the tale has now passed away. ‘None left’, the supermarket song, contains some excellent comedy interjections from a pre-recorded staff announcer, and hats off to whoever came up with the names of the scientists Professor Hans Facenspace and Pam Demic.

This is a show for the upper reaches of Key Stage 2: the speaking lines are relatively long and complicated, so it asks quite a lot of its actors. It is also a show that should be undertaken with great caution – how students (and an audience) might respond to a show making jokes about the pandemic will naturally depend on their own personal experience of the situation. That said, it is well put together, and the clear and user-friendly elements such as licensing instructions and full CD tracks for all backing music and sound effects, as well as the piano scores, are welcome resources.

www.edgyproductions.com