2023 Production

Although Mrs Castro broke her back, although all the props were destroyed by the flood, the Greatest Showman Production keeps on going. As everything seems to be breaking and crumbling around them their spirits remain unbroken. Is this musical cursed or is it just severely unlucky? Through days of hard practice, the final show comes to sight. Will they be ready?

This leads us to our first point. After speaking with various people, most said that they do feel ready. They have been practicing for a while, and although facing troubles such as: the choreography, and the singing most say that they feel confident for the show. Bahigea Alassaad, Mathilde Hill Elbert and Amelie Bell all agree that the only thing that they would change is that the production needs more time.

On the night of the show, I was super enthusiastic. The show that the school produced was beyond words. Sofie and I went to two of the shows, one of which we observed more carefully and the other where we were there for our personal enjoyment. We both realized some remarkably interesting things. All the shows were unique in their own way. For example, the lead character, PT Barnum, played by Francisco Silva improvises in each one of the shows. The best example here are the interviews. He slightly changes the words in the interviews. Silva still says approximately the same. He also changes what way he runs walks and some of his actions. For instance; in one of the scenes, he ran and did a leprechaun kick. In the next show, he was running out of time and couldn’t do this, but instead whispered “yes”. Another example is when he didn’t have his jacket on stage when he needed it. Silva asked one of the show girls: “Would you mind getting me something more suitable?” At first, I thought this was normal, but when I watched the show the second time, he didn’t do this because he already had his jacket. This is some talent right there, being able to improvise on the spot like that.

Everyone that we talked to agreed that all the practices seemed to be going fine, but then on the actual night of the show all the actors were nervous. However, byon the second and third performance everyone seemed to calm down. It didn’t help either that backstage was very crowded and hectic. Last minute people realized that they were missing props for the next scene, but it was organized. Organized chaos.

Another thing that made the show amazing, (and as Mrs. Castro said so often) is that the students were the ones that made this happen. We were so dazzled by the music and how the students were playing this all on their own. We were also amazed by the choreographies. The ballerinas could have been real at this point! But it did take a lot of work. Although most said that the choreography was the hardest and that they didn’t think they were ready, we talked to the head Ballerina, Amanda when asked, ‘what would you change of you could?’ Her answer was short but had meaning. “Nothing, I really like the way it is.” She was right. The ballerinas had an excellent performance, flawless as far as we could tell. As well as that, backstage was amazing. All the props got changed as soon as they needed to, and the stage was always ready in time for the next scene.

This show may have been our first, but it was certainly worth watching. With the tickets sold out for two nights straight the team even had to add another performance on Saturday evening.