Alana, a young recording artist, finds herself alone after the sudden death of her father. As if that would not be enough to deal with, she is set up for a new love and a drastically altered family tree as well.
Monologue melted into dialogue, and dialogue into song seamlessly, and the music choices proved sensitive, and moving at times.
The play thrusts the audience into the story as fast as the characters are, establishing the setting firmly, clearly and quickly and doesn’t really let up the pace until the end. Despite this, Alana never became exhausting and by the close had created a delicate and touching story.
Monologue melted into dialogue, and dialogue into song seamlessly, and the music choices proved sensitive, and moving at times. Alana’s mother provided a little humour with her conniving nature, and all of the actors seemed natural and comfortable in their roles.
Although it was marketed as a modern fairy story, this element didn’t quite come to the fore. Alana was indeed fast paced as it had been described, which kept the story engaging and the audience interested. However, the play could have benefitted from a running time longer than an hour simply because of the big themes and situations the characters were exploring. Grief, love and a massive development in one’s family tree, all complex and difficult areas that in hindsight felt a little underdeveloped because of the lack of time they were afforded. Perhaps it was just the wish to see more of the characters that were likable and relatable, as the story itself had no faults in its structure or clarity.
All in all Alana proved to be an engaging and moving story graced with good performances and lovely live music.
