More than forty talented and enthusiastic performers sing and dance a medley of Broadway show tunes, on and off the stage.
The Roosevelt Theatre Ensemble is a High School company from Seattle, Washington. Their new show covers fifty years of Broadway musicals through non-stop songs by Gershwin, Porter, Sondheim and others, starting with the theme tune Too Darn Hot, ending with 42nd Street and including many old favourites along the way. The show is loosely themed; one section has an all male ensemble performing excerpts from musicals based around ships and the sea while another has a group of duelling divas.
The show is captivating from the beginning. It opens with the entire cast on a stage, which looks almost too small, but so well choreographed and rehearsed that the performers are able immediately to throw themselves into their energetic song and dance routines. They are young and enthusiastic so even old, well-known songs, come over fresh and interesting. At times performers spill over stage and up the aisles, encouraging the audience to join in. The quality of the singing and dancing is very high, particularly in the ensemble pieces.
There is also a great deal of humour in the show. Four divas compete in Anything you can do, I can do better and reach surprisingly high and painful notes, but the highlight has to be a performance of The Camptown races sung by a trio - a man in a dress and two glove puppets. Great fun and well worth seeing.
