Review by Feli­city Cozens

Love music­als?  Love Foot­lights?  Want a jour­ney through every show they’ve done since 2014? Book through Tick­et­booth and get down to Te Aua­ha on Dix­on for a typ­ic­ally fab­ulous Foot­lights show!  Laura Gardner’s set is decept­ively simple – a raised dais and a set of stairs topped by a plat­form – but it’s the trail of song­sheets that grab our atten­tion, wan­der­ing around the walls of the stage and indic­at­ing the mahi of this and every music­al com­pany.

The band enters to a rous­ing cheer and they do a beau­ti­ful and sym­path­et­ic job, nev­er drown­ing out the per­formers – thank you to the excel­lent Chris Hay­ward for your per­fect sound design.  It needs to be added here that there are cer­tain per­formers who, when not dan­cing and singing up a storm, also play gui­tar, or flute, or con­duct!

It was impossible to not sing along to this show – sooo many won­der­ful and well-known songs – the singing is uni­formly good, with a few standouts who’ll go unmen­tioned simply because every­one has their own opin­ion of what a great sing­er is – plenty of them here any­way!  All the songs have been chosen with care, and the dic­tion is per­fect, nev­er missed a word. The ori­gin­al­ity of the present­a­tion and arrange­ments of dif­fer­ent songs – think­ing par­tic­u­larly of Show Me from My Fair Lady, and Being Alive from Com­pany, is a joy.  The dan­cing is ter­rif­ic, and Mel Heaphy and Katty Lau have made dan­cers and non-dan­cers alike look superb.

Thank You Ten is a slick show, it nev­er flags, energy and com­mit­ment abound.  Beau­ti­fully dir­ec­ted by Laura Gard­ner.

A few things I’ve noticed over the years of watch­ing Foot­lights’ beau­ti­ful shows are the joy each per­former brings to the work they do, and they way they engage with the audi­ence; and how per­formers com­mu­nic­ate with one anoth­er onstage.  The work is always utterly hon­est and real – there is a respect for the work itself and for the priv­ilege of being onstage as a per­former. We, the audi­ence are always part of the show, always invited along for the ride. That is the Foot­lights’ point of dif­fer­ence.