Musical review

On march 2nd 2019, I watched the winter musical performed by Cheshire Academy students in the black box theater. The play is called “Foot Loose” directed by Ms.Guarino. Throughout the performance, I was very impressed by lots of young talented performers Cheshire Academy has to create such a great play, and I am going to review what I saw and some of my thought on this play. 

The story tells about how Ren McCormick (act by Tony Wang) comes to a new town from Chicago, where there is no music, dancing, or any form of entertaining allowed because of the tragic accident happened years ago. Leaving his home and coming to a new place really make Ren struggle for a while, and the new rules here made him suffered. Then he meets Ariel, who is the daughter of the preach in this town (act by Aaron), and quickly falls in love with her. Eventually Ren gathers all his classmates and debate for the freedom to dance and entertain, and they win the debate and the town lives back to wonderfully. There were also other branches of the main story too. For example, the awkward love relationship between Willard (by Ray) and Rusty (by Mao), and the relationship between Ariel and her father. The themes that are showed in this performance would be love, loneliness, conflict, and religion.  I think one of the main themes that is expressed throughout the play will be the theme of love. In every branch of the story, there is always a love relationship between characters. For instance, when Ariel and Ren go to the train station and Ariel tells Ren how she comes here and scream, Ren expresses the same kind of feeling, which is feeling controlled, then they start to hold hands. The romance is created here. Another good example will be the relation between Willard and Rusty. Their relationship is kind of different than the one between Ren and Ariel, because there is more humour involved between their conversation and they never express their true feelings to each other, and instead they all tell their feelings to their friends(Ren and Wendy). 

One of the great things about this performance would be the detailed staging for the very beginning to the end. At the beginning of the performance when everybody in the town are dancing, performers were spread out equally and also with enough space to move around, which shows the great preparation of staging and the great design. The lighting is dark blue with party music, which sets the entertaining tone perfectly. Then, suddenly there is a sound effect which is the accident. This dramatic turning point really grabbed my attention from the very start of the performance. Another point that I have to mention is the short period of time between each scene; I’m can see how much preparation there was simply by counting how fast people were moving the props during blackouts; the short time period between each scene makes the audience keep engaged, which was impressive. When there is a restaurant scene, the whole stage is used, full of tables and chairs with people chatting which helps a lot with setting a good background for the performance; each background performer was extremely engaged as if they were actually having a conversation with others in this town. For costumes, one of the most obvious one would be the costumes of Ariel’s friends; they all wear ore colourful clothes than other people, which symbolises how they care about fashion and reflects their age; they all a little bit like gossip, and the fancy colors really help to represent that. Also, for the father of Ariel, Aaron, he wears a suit all the time, which is one of the the few formal dresses in the performance, which tells the audience about his status in the town and how he is different from the kids who wear fancy clothes. The father is very different from other people in the two because he needs to care about the whole town and maintain his reputation by making new laws, which is the opposite of Ren, who only cares about freedom. 

In this whole performance, the performer that grabs my attention the most would be Ray, who acts Willard. Though he does not have as many lines as other main characters, his body language was right on point, which shows his sense of humour and this really helps the create more drama. For example, when he is trying to talk to Rusty, he walks slowly with small steps as if he is afraid to scaring her. Throughout the performance he is engaged in the character and took his time to build up his emotions, which is what good actor does. This is why I was impressed the most by him. 


Overall, I really enjoyed watching this play. As one of the few musicals I have watched, this one is definitely the most impressive one since all performers are very engaged and all actions were right on point. I think this play really helped me to gain experience of how to do musical and make such a huge group of people all be able to develop their drama. 

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