Opening with a trio of beautiful ballet dancers, I was prepared to be pleasantly surprised by this musical update of the medieval morality play 'Everyman'. Sadly, this was nowhere near the case. For those not familiar with the story, the basic premise is that God becomes angered with Man's bad behaviour and has Death bring 'Everyman' to him to settle the score. What follows is a tale of sin and repentance in the good, old fashioned, fire and brimstone way. Basically, it's a sermon. Now, a sermon set to music? That should raise the tone of the piece right?!Wrong. This is 'American Pie' meets 'High School Musical'. The opening number should be big, bolshy and attention grabbing but with a tinny, midi backing track and lack-lustre ensemble singing, it falls short and stays there. Singing needs to be drastically improved all-round, with the main character of 'Everychild' barely hitting a single note correctly. 'Everychild' is played as a loud, obnoxious party-animal, which is fine, but he never actually lapses in this characterisation, even when he's meant to be repentant. He's irritating and unlikeable. 'Fellowship' is meant to be the joker of the piece and I assume he was probably quite funny. If only he'd projected his voice and actually enunciated any of his lines, I would have been able to hear them and have a little giggle. As for turning the Angel Gabriel into simpering, half-wit Angel Gabriela... the less said the better. The tantalising glimpse of a clarinet in the hands of 'God' made me sit up in my chair, only to be disappointed when it is used to blurt an out of tune 8-note scale at the end of a song. It has to be said though that, were this a dance show, it would deserve 4 stars hands down. My word, these kids can dance! There are some simply stunning ballet compositions by very talented young ladies but, sadly, even this cannot elevate the tone of the performance. As many mistakes as this show has, I was actually quite enjoying it and was even impressed by learning that the script and songs are original and created by the students themselves. And then the Scottish 'cousins' came on stage. You're IN Scotland. Edinburgh, the capital city, in fact. Therefore, you'd assume that it would be prudent to actually LEARN to do a Scottish accent if you're playing a Scottish character. Not these guys, nope. They plough on with stereotype after Scottish stereotype and to be honest, it's boring and a little insulting. This was only highlighted further by Death's line; 'I cannot take one more Scottish folk song cliché'. Amen to that, sister. Actually, Death came as a welcome relief... and I'm not just being literal here. Anna Kerr (Death) absolutely saves this show. She's wonderfully dark and cynical and is the only person who captivated me fully. She has a strong singing voice and stage presence to, ahem, die for. Following in her footsteps is Faith Connor (Good Deeds) whose soaring soprano voice left me open-mouthed and enraged as to why she had only been given a solo 5 minutes from the end. These two girls are truly talented and made the best of a weak show.'Everyman' was a diatribe meant to strike fear into sinners and cause them to repent and follow the Lord. 'Everychild' is a bedtime story that would put anyone to sleep.
