James And The Giant Peach At Loughborough Public School

After the final rousing performance of James and the Giant Peach Jr. at Loughborough Public School on Thursday evening, May 15, the shows director, teacher Mark Blackett, recalled that he decided to bring the play to Loughborough, and a musical friend of his asked him if he had looked at the music in it.

He hadn’t. But when he did, he realised, “the music is wonderful, and very difficult”.

The play is very much in the style of a musical. Much of the exposition takes place in the songs, and the spoken dialogue is often only a quick setup for the production number to follow.

The first issue Blackett, and his directorial team, had to deal with, was to help the students in the production learn to sing the songs, and to be able to project their voices over all of the music, all the while moving through some complicated choreography, on a stage crowded with other performers.

“Everything we asked of the students, from memorising lines to learning music and dance steps, they took on. It was amazing,” he said.

Two of the key roles in the production are that of James, who was played by Meghan Goof, and Ladahlord, a narrator/MC role, played by Isla Oatway.

The two actors provided the contrasting takes on their characters that fit the roles and the interplay between them well.

As James, Meghan Good was very much the orphan boy, unsure of his place in the world, slowly coming into his own and out of the shadow of the other characters. The character is written in the vein of Oliver Twist, and Meghan captured the growing confidence of James as he made the transition from victim to hero. And Meghan did have a lot of dialogue, and a lot of singing to do, and never missed a line, a lyric, or a spot on the floor.

Isla Outway portrayed Ladahlord in the vein of Joel Gray’s portrayal of the MC in Cabaret, talking, or rather singing, to the audience as well as the other characters, and setting the pace of the entire production with a lot of confidence and charm.

The other pair of actors at the centre of much of the action were Bronwyn Rauchfleisch and Raelynn Epping as Aunt Spiker and Aunt Sponge. They were indeed nasty, with Aunt Sponge showing only enough vulnerability to distinguish herself from her even more sinister sister. Again, the two actors had to sing and dance their way through the play at a fast pace, still managing to inhabit their characters, and play for laughs, now and then.

The other major roles in the production, were Emma Hopkins as Grasshopper, one of the stronger singers in the production, Danny Neff as a very sympathetic Earthworm, Felicity Meyer as the harried Centipede, Clara Lightbody as the feisty Ladybug, and Ella Sissons, who brought a lot of personality to the beleaguered Spider, who ends up saving the day.

Ryan Moore, Caiden Shelley, Marco Hu, Isla Greenless, Isobel Greenless, Lucas Tudor, and Caleb Hammer all played multiple roles, as well as being part of the ensemble with 12 other performers.

The ensemble entered and exited the stage multiple times, sang and danced up a storm, and created a sense of occasion throughout the production.

In place of complicated sets, the production used projections on a large screen behind the stage to set the location, and for the giant peach, the orphanage, New York City. The actors had to play to the screen at times, especially when it came to the peach, and that worked out well. This decision to use a screen in place of a lot of sets had a few extra benefits. It enabled the production to run non-stop through a complicated production in just over an hour, and it meant that the large number of actors on the stage at some points, up to 25 at the same time, could move around an open stage.

The sets that were in place, and the props that the characters used, were easy to handle and easy for the audience to identify. There was an effective use of both murals and costumes, and Amanda Kerr, with help from Elizabeth Kay and Tammy Jamieson, deserves credit for her work on costumes.

Melanie Fox-Wisteard created the puppets that were used in the production, a key element in the visual appeal of the play.

The technical team of Olicia Webster, Josh Bruce, Emma Hanna, Gwen Eeuwes, Paddy Foley and Caitlyn Weir deserve credit as well.

A lot of staff support went into the production as well. It was a school-wide effort. Among those who helped out, Kaileigh Reddick deserves mention, as one of the assistant directors. The Thursday evening final performance of the play came about just as she was starting maternity leave.

A musical will be back at Loughborough, but in two years. It will take the school community a year to recover from James and the Giant Peach (Jr.).