The Wild Party

Like the production of Spring Awakening (reviewed elsewhere), this award-winning musical is abridged, curtailed, squashed and packed, here into sixty short minutes. It benefits, rather than is hindered, by these demands. The musical is a cross between a Fitzgerald novel and the film version of Chicago, with much drink and drugs and something even more sinister about ten minutes from the end. Durham Uni’s Light Opera Group put together a speedy production with great choreography and perfectly Vaudevillian vocals.

The costumes, especially, with their singular threads like the sort of veils that droop over doors in the Middle East, are alluring and help link the busy nature of the plot, which focuses around a floozy called Queenie who attends a happening party full of artistic Jews and playboys and those who want to be models despite being too precocious. Something had to give and, when it does, it is perfectly realised. There is no weak link in the cast and, though I felt I needed more ruination in the final third, the ending felt like one of those Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas which just ends abruptly. Perhaps, it being a light opera company, that was rather the point.

A side note: having gone to see a concert at the Usher Hall I rebuked the posh lads behind me and discovered they were in the band for this very production; in all seriousness their musicality and the musical direction was phenomenal. I am very pleased serendipity played its part in me seeing one of the finest student-led shows of this Fringe, and wish DULOG all the best in the coming year.

The Wild Party
Ctoo
21:50 5-30 Aug