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.