Award-Winning Street Scene

Two Schools in Hertfordshire, Fleetville Junior School in St Albans and Kings Langley Secondary School will perform in one of the greatest 20th century Americain musicals, Kurt weill's, Street Scene, at Watford Palace Theatre, 4th and 5th July 2008. It's a co-production with The Opera Group and the Young Vic.

12 pupils (year 5 and year 6) from Fleetville Junior School and 7 girls aged 16 to 18 from Kings Langley Secondary School will make up nearly half of the chorus at the two performances in Watford.

Street Scene was adapted by Elmer Rice from his own Pulitzer Prize-winning play and the lyrics are by the poet Langston Hughes. It will be up of 15 singers drawn from the worlds of opera and musical theatre, a chorus of 50 (including the young people recruited), a chamber orchestra of 30 and a dog.

Frank Maurrant is a hard man and tough with his family. His wife, Anna, desperate for affection, has sought it elsewhere. Their daughter, Rose, dreams of escaping with the boy from the second floor. Set in a brownstone tenement building over a long hot summer's day and night, Street Scene is "a simple story of everyday life in a big city - a story of love and passion, and greed and death". Street Scene is a combination of show tunes, arias, jazz, and blues in a musical melting pot.

November 2008 - STREET SCENE WINS THEATRE AWARD
Street Scene takes ‘Best Musical’ in Evening Standard Theatre Awards

Street Scene, a co-production between The Opera Group, Watford Palace Theatre and The Young Vic, won the ‘Best Musical’ accolade at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards, held at the Royal Opera House on Monday 24th November 2008.

John Fulljames’ sizzling account of the Kurt Weill/Langston Hughes’ musical Street Scene, which played at Watford Palace Theatre, The Young Vic, and on tour this summer, beat off strong competition from the blockbuster musicals Marguerite and La Cage aux Folles to take The Ned Sherrin Award for Best Musical.

The production seamlessly integrated a cast of fifteen professional singers, a 30-strong on-stage orchestra and in the two Watford performances twelve year 5 and year 6 pupils from Fleetville Junior School in St Albans and seven girls aged 16 to 18 from Kings Langley Secondary School. A hundred young people and adults as chorus, dancers and extras were involved in the large-scale performance.

The pupils involved from Fleetville Junior School all from the St Albans area included: Oliver Davies; Charlie Edwards; Tian Figg; Zakwani Gabourel; Max Houghton; Benjamin Larkworthy; Alexander Lee; Felicity Lumley; Eleanor Stemple; Katy Stern; Courtney Ward; Rebecca Yates.

Pupils involved in the chorus from Kings Langley Secondary School were: Karen Brazier; Caroline Hardingham; Iona Preston (Kings Langley); Jerry Prout (Apsley); Laura-Anne Robins (Bedmond); Nivin Jacob and Elaine Tang (Abbotts Langley).

Reviewing Street Scene in July the Evening Standard’s Theatre critic, Nicholas de Jongh praised the “huge ensemble (which) thrillingly registers the climactic moments of an extraordinary opera-musical that deserves further exposure, while Rupert Christiansen, writing in The Daily Telegraph, declared:“It’s hard to fault The Opera Group’s terrific staging, energetically directed by John Fulljames, stylishly designed by Dick Bird and forcefully conducted by Patrick Bailey.”

Street Scene is a triumphant meeting of Broadway musical and American opera, incorporating a dazzling array of show tunes, arias, blues, jazz and spirituals: a musical melting-pot that captures the diversity of working class New York in 1947. Described by Weill as “a simple story of everyday life in a big city, a story of love and passion and greed and death”, the opera follows the inhabitants of a tenement building over one hot summer’s day and night.

Opening times: Friday, July 4 and Saturday, July 5, 7.30pm
Address: Watford Palace Theatre
20 Clarendon Road
Watford
Herts
WD17 1JZ
Telephone: 01923 225671
Email: julia@wa...re.co.uk
Website: http://w...re.co.uk/