You Can't Hurry Love - Norton Canes High School Theatre (Spotlight Youth Productions)

 "A tremendous performance from an awarded group.."

The Spotlight youngsters never fail to delight their audiences and last night’s performance of You Can’t Hurry Love was no exception. Brilliantly written by Spotlight member Steve Groves, this colourful and vibrant musical comedy features holiday makers, holiday camp entertainers and the dedicated, nail-biting staff of Pontlings as they prepare to open their holiday camp to the public for the very first time.

A fabulous set-list of well-loved, mainly up-beat songs from the 50s and 60s drive the storyline along at an enthusiastic pace as auditions turn into summer jobs, holiday romances blossom, new friendships are sealed and big dreams come true. And this exciting all-singing-all-dancing cast of young people have clearly worked very hard indeed to produce a truly sparkling, fast-paced and highly entertaining show.

Directed by Charlotte Cowley and Michele Windsor, with Chris Allen and Ian Windsor in charge of music, the production is backed by a competent live band off stage and technically steered by an adept sound and light crew who have designed some really lovely schemes to compliment the big dance numbers and scene changes. Nice, simple set pieces with quality, hand-painted designs are utilised well and scenes change almost unnoticeably as the over 60-strong group of well costumed performers execute well-rehearsed entries and exits with Red Arrows precision (or so it seemed from the front!), always with confidence and self assurance.

Too large a cast to mention individually (although I would love to!) but a huge well done to the principal actors for their excellent character portrayals and confident singing, congratulations to the lead dancers who demonstrated some excellent choreography and, of course, to the supporting character actors - from tiny to tall who all did the company proud.

A tremendous performance from an awarded group who are clearly big on the ‘theatre family’ ethos, who, as a group, radiate love and confidence and who should be incredibly proud of their continuing achievements.

Runs to 13 July

ps. Looking forward to seeing the Christmas panto production of Creepy Hollow! 
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