Striking 12

Synopsis

This quirky musical retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale The Little Match Girl fuses jazz, rock and show tunes and had its world premiere at the Daryl Roth Theater off-Broadway in 2006 to critical acclaim:

Our Review:

10 December 2010

Waterloo East Theatre, nestling in the railway arches by the station, is offering Striking 12 by Brendan Milburn, Rachel Sheinkin and Valerie Vigoda as their first Christmas production. The almost entirely sung storyline, using a range of rock, pop, folky and sub-Sondheim musical forms, has three parallel tracks - a group of actors, a bah-humbug bloke wallowing in his own misery as the time approaches midnight one New Year's Eve and Hans Christian Andersen's Little Match Girl.

Fusing these three elements isn't entirely successful; the first, the actors themselves, occasionally breaks through the fourth wall, disrupting the narrative flow. This was particularly evident with one out-of-the-blue aside to the audience by The Girl and a later scene where the drummer ([Roger Woods)] protests at being given the rubbish parts. A funny moment which gave him the chance to flaunt his top-notch drumming skills but felt out of place in the context of the piece.

The othe...

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Latest User Review

Ewan McNay - 30 December 2010:

Just come back from this (Dec 30th) and apparently the reviews have not got through to the sound staff: the cast were markedly undermiked, to the point of being inaudible often even to us in the front row (some few feet from the stage). Very poor. We've seen the original cast in three productions of this, all superb. Granted, Val, Brendan & Gene (the drummer in GrooveLily) are friends, but the London cast doesn't measure up even with the splitting of both lead roles to two people each. We thought that the singing was surprisingly poor, with only the blonde female lead showing flashes of talent; but much or all of that could have been due to struggling to be heard at all. And the splitting of the male lead role - could they not find anyone to fill these roles?? - meant that the keyboard player was assigned lines and songs that just didn't fit. Would have been better to just have a musical support section and stronger actors, if needed. Sadly, could not recommend, and we'd likely not return to the theatre....

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