THE award-winning Milborne Port Opera (MPO) group will be celebrating 100 years of musical theatre in its next production, Everything Goes, next month.
A group of actors are rehearsing their next show on stage. The theatre cleaner wanders in and demands to know what is going on.
The director and the cast explain by performing their show, and at the same time provide a potted history of musical theatre, from Showboat to Chicago, and back again via Hamilton and Les Miserables.
The cleaner ends up wiser and vastly entertained – by their performances, as well as the backstage banter and antics of the cast. Converted!
The show features well known and lesser set pieces from many favourite hit musicals and films.
Many of these are ensemble pieces but with solos from MPO’s favourite performers. All the usual gang are in the show, plus a few new members, who have thrown themselves into the production with great enthusiasm.
The challenge for MPO is to perform the show’s numbers out of context and not in full costume, to respect copyright and licensing laws.
Audiences should not be surprised if ‘Matchmaker’ from Fidler on the Roof is about Tinder dating. Or ‘Putting On My White Tie’ is about a group of men getting ready to go out on the town for the night. Or Oklahoma is set in the departure lounge of a holiday airport.
The show has been devised and written by drama teacher Karen Pankhurst, who also co-directs. Karen is an accomplished comedy performer, singer and dancer who joined MPO in 2019 for its hit Anything Goes, in which she played Bonnie, the gangster’s moll.
Her co-directors are two accomplished MPO performers and musicians. Rachel Milestone – Trial by Jury, Anything Goes and Merry Widow – and Allison Gosney – co-director of Anything Goes.
Caroline D’Cruz, who joined the company in 2006, continues as musical director.
Soloists include Andrew Armstrong, Chris Bailward, Sukie Read, Alison Ruddy, Jessie Stones, Karen Pankhurst, Rachel Milestone, Rachel Revell and Anthony White.
Matt Baker plays the show’s director and performs some of the numbers. Richard Gaunt plays Stan, the hall cleaner, and Linda Mumford, Edith, the tea lady, who comment on the action and propel the show forwards.
Everything Goes marks another step in MPO’s evolution. The company has a well-deserved reputation for beautiful choral singing in light opera such as Gilbert and Sullivan and Franz Lehar, but often with a modern slant in the production.
Over the last decade the company has also staged several Broadway and West End musicals, culminating in the sell-out Anything Goes performed in the round on an arena stage in the village hall in 2019.
It has also staged acclaimed musicals by its own members – particularly Neil Edwards’ successful trilogy of Edwardian musical capers involving crimes, plots, spying, romance and circuses.
Everything Goes plays in Milborne Port village hall from Wednesday, April 12, to Saturday, April 15, at 7.30pm.
Tickets £15 (£10 concessions only on the first night). Box office www.mpopera.co.uk, also from Waynes butchers, Milborne Port.