A children's story book was the first outing of Mr. Maglump. It's writer, Brook Tate, a supported artist at Bristol Old Vic, then had the idea of extending his vision and write songs and make it into a musical for children.
In March of 2019, in the Old Vic's Westen Studio, a workshopped performance of this musical took place. It was recorded for posterity, and has been made available on the company's website so that we may watch it during the coronavirus lockdown.
Recruiting cast from Old Vic Theatre School students, and with no set (save a trestle table and a few chairs), no costume and only piano and drums accompaniment, this was a bare bones production in every respect. The most telling sadly was that the students were too young for many of the roles, and they had also to multi-role to an audience without the help of costume changes (a shawl or change or jacket was not sufficient), and they didn't have the requisite expertise or years of experience to be able to fully carry something like this off. Moreover the qulaity of the recording was not optimal, preferring natural sound and some very strange editing cross-over effects which simply made our visual pleasure even worse.
It was therefore extremely hard to try and be constructive about this piece. However, I am uncertain also about the style of show and the music. If this is aimed at primary children (perhaps up to the age of 8 maximum) - my nephew is eight and would have been bored after the first ten minutes! - then the music seemed far too "adult". It wasn't funky, up-beat, modern, pop, and so not very relatable for their target age group. It also seemed quite dialogue-heavy and the play was too long for the target audience.
It seemed a lovely little story which explored a few pertinent themes and had a good message, but in this workshopped state, held very little to entertain or hold interest despite the students' best efforts to get to grips with the piece.
Reviewer - Chris Benchley
on - 15/6/20
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