Review: Collaborating UO and Oakfields Students Deliver Promising SONGS FOR A NEW WORLD at #NAF16

Musical theatre on the Student Theatre Festival at the National Arts Festival tends to be a rather haphazard affair. It is true that there is the odd cabaret, but universities and colleges rarely produce bona fide chamber musicals here, although there has been an upsurge in productions such as these in recent years, largely thanks to the Waterfront Theatre School's entries of Roland Perold's TWEET, Michelle Elliott and Danny Larsen's THE YELLOW WOOD, Ben Hales's ADAM AND EVE and Benj Pasek and Justin Paul's EDGES onto the student platform. This year, The University of Oklahoma and Oakfields College collaborated to produce Jason Robert Brown's SONGS FOR A NEW WORLD, with a Production Company and cast drawn from both institutions and selected segments of the show translated into South African languages, an aspect of the production that I have already reviewed for BroadwayWorld. This experimental approach is a considered use of the student platform, especially given that the piece itself is not an original one. The production itself, as many student productions tend to be, is something of a curate's egg, albeit one with many highlights.

SONGS FOR A NEW WORLD is a song cycle, with the songs linked thematically in that they all deal with transitions into new life stages or experiences. Relationships are scrutinised in songs like the absurdly comic "Just One Step", the always moving "Stars and the Moon" and the sentimentally romantic "I'd Give it All For You". The experience of motherhood at the beginning and end of a child's life is explored in "Christmas Lullaby" and "The Flagmaker, 1775", the latter of which also delves into socio-political issues, as do numbers like "The River Won't Flow" and "King of the World". It is quite an experience to hear this early Brown score once again after several years, during which the composer-lyricist has premiered shows, from PARADE and THE LAST FIVE YEARS to THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY and HONEYMOON IN VEGAS, in place the development of his craft into a clear context.

With the American and South African teams working separately until shortly before the festival and then piecing the show together in less than a week of collaborative time, Harold Mortimer's staging of the show, with choreography by Weslee Swain Lauder, assisted by Taylor Bryant, has a loose quality to it, with the stage picturisation, visual motifs and range of movement languages not quite as fully developed as they could be. A longer combined rehearsal period might also have allowed the entire group to negotiate the effects of the translation in the production and to experiment with the extent of the language shifts in some numbers. Some numbers, like "On the Deck of a Spanish Sailing Ship, 1492", are stuck at a conceptual level and need to be teased out more to work out what the song is attempting to communicate. In others, like "Surabaya Santa", the newly conceived approaches fail completely, despite sometimes excellent translations and performances. But when a number in this SONGS FOR A NEW WORD works, it works: "Christmas Lullaby" and "King of the World" are both success stories of this experiment in translation and adaptation.

The cast of ten performers work seamlessly as an ensemble, all remaining on stage throughout the production. All are at various stages in their training as student actors, with standout performances coming from Bonginkosi "Jay" Hlatshwayo, who delivers a powerful "King of the World" and Songezo Khumalo's raw reading of "Christmas Lullaby". Ashley Mandanas has great fun with the character number, "Just One Step", while Danelle Cronjé renders a moving "Stars and the Moon". Katja Yanko offers unwavering support throughout the show, coming into her own in "The Flagmaker, 1775", where she is joined by Cronjé and Khumalo. In "The Steam Train", William Harris dances some spunky tap choreography, delivering the steps with a flair and conviction seldom seen by tappers in this country. Spencer Laboda and BRandon Loelly have a good time playing their standoff in "The River Won't Flow", although the former needs to work on sustaining his stage presence throughout the performance and the latter needs to work on his vocal resilience. Alyssa Harrison delivers her half of "Surabaya Santa" with conviction, although both she and Mandanas were given a short shrift by having to share the number in the first place. Although he sports an endearing lankiness on stage, Hizel Riffel was overpowered by his number, "She Cries".

The unamplified singing in the show - and how wonderful it was to hear the live voice inhabit the space with the live music performed by David Cousins and Justin Swarts, under Mortimer's musical direction - showcased the cast members' vocal development. Some of the technique in evidence in SONGS FOR A NEW WORLD is incredibly strong, with some of the performers exercising excellent control over their use various vocal registers. Mortimer himself and his associate musical director, Wessel Odendaal, must be commended for their contributions in this regard.

The design of SONGS FOR A NEW WORLD is simple. With the set consisting of a row of chairs, the imagery on stage is created mainly using the actors' bodies. The costumes are casual, with the company dressed in various items of black clothing. Both aspects of the design needed refinement, with the chairs seemingly consisting of whatever was handy and the costumes lacking variety in texture. Although these problems probably arose due to the short period that the two institutions had to piece the production together, both could have quite easily addressed even in this time frame.

SONGS FOR A NEW WORLD delivered an engaging 85 minutes of musical theatre, managing to explore a clear thesis while doing so. Like some of the musicals presented at the Student Arts Festival over the past few years, it raised the bar of what can be accomplished on this platform in this genre, with the collaboration of the two tertiary musical theatre departments each spurring the other into new worlds, each - to paraphrase the show itself - calling across the ocean.

SONGS FOR A NEW WORLD opened at the National Arts Festival's Student Theatre Festival on 1 July and subsequently transferred to the National Lottery Fringe for a run through 3 July.

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