Rating: 4.5/5
Venue: Greenside @ George Street, Edinburgh
With less than a day until curtains up, the techies must band together to save a show that is falling apart! Will they manage to make the Director’s dream come to life? Will Lights get her moment in the spotlight? Or will Stage Right set the stage on fire? With more twists and turns than a badly coiled cable, musical genres are flipped on their head and backstage heroes come into the spotlight – this brand-new student-written musical is sure to have you hot-glued to your seat! This is, after all, Technically: A Musical!
Technically: A Musical is a frantic, chaotic and very VERY accurate (coming from someone who would know) representation of what goes on behind the scenes while prepping for opening night of a show. This was probably my most anticipated watch of the fringe and my goodness did it deliver! Created by a group of students at Foot of the Hill Theatre Company in Durham, it shines a light for the first time on those who generally live in the shadows. As a stage manager and the technician, I was so excited to see a show that finally brings us to the forefront, a fantastic execution of a concept never seen before on stage.
The show itself actually has a fairly simple storyline, a production team are working tirelessly in the final hours before their show is due to open, all while facing a director (Jess Bell) who wants to change absolutely everything and achieve impossibly complicated technical effects which would require weeks worth of work on mere hours notice, company infighting, panic attacks, and broken dreams. We get briefly introduced to some of the characters side plots, only one of which really follows through to the end of the show, leaving the company in the perfect position to extend this hour of joyful madness into a full length production - something I truly believe should be done!
Rather than having names, each character is simply referred to by the name of their technical department e.g. ‘Lights’ (Jolie Rooks) or ‘Sound’ (Grace Heron), which is painfully accurate and something I experience regularly. It can often feel like we are only seen as our job title instead of real people working hard to create someone else’s vision and this is a brilliant representation of that. The show also cleverly breaks the fourth wall with Luke Mallon as ‘Keys’ in the show, but is also Musical Director and plays throughout. He wrote the music for the show and manages to merge the worlds with his fantastic comedic timing.
Each character manages to reflect the stereotypical crew members perfectly, from the hippie chaotic director who is all over the place and wants to change everything five minutes before curtain up, to the stage manager (Rhiannon Morgan) living in one perpetual panic attack, and the Stage Hands (Emily Power & Niamh Williams) who bicker like siblings and treat the centre line like a frontline. There is even a song about sticking to their own sides and refusing to interact. I found this one of the most powerful numbers in the show, as it really contributes to the ‘teamwork makes the dream work’ message that the show is trying to spread, and made the ending more poignant.
With a beautiful and delightfully varied score, ingenious lyrics, and a hilarious script, this show is not only a really lovely homage to technical and production crew everywhere and a reminder of how hard we all work behind-the-scenes to make and keep a show running; but it also spreads a wider message to remember that there’s always people that you can’t see working harder than you could possibly imagine, no matter where you are or what you’re doing and it’s really important to recognise and appreciate them.
You can find out more about Technically: A Musical, here.
Review by Rachel
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