CAROLINE CULOT Norwich Theatre Royal

CAROLINE CULOT

Norwich Theatre Royal

It's time to grab your cutlass for a two-hour epic adventure of pirates and parrots, magic and mayhem in this year's Theatre Royal junior arts course summer production.

Written and directed by David Lambert, this show once again achieves the impossible by giving its mammoth cast - totalling more than 300 youngsters aged from eight to 20 performing over five shows - a chance to shine.

And once again, this hugely talented bunch of young people pulled it off, delivering a first-class show which maintained pace, had lots of humour and plenty of big numbers so everyone got a chance in the limelight.

It's always a joy to watch this annual show and see many of the same faces performing and growing in maturity and talent from year to year, and what was highly impressive last night was how much comic ability the group has.

There were some wonderful scenes made so memorable by little cameo performances executed marvellously - for instance the very amusing slave scene.

Proving to have real comic talent were many including Daisy Wood as the cockney genie the Jinn, James Ducker as Ismail the slave trader, Thomas Sparkes as the captain and Hannah Shirtliffe as the priestess.

Also really working it were the glamorous witches played by Rebecca Hadley, Rebecca Molloy, Abigail Parker, Alice Cogdell and Jo Francis who were fabulous.

Paul Comerford also made a convincing pirate chief and all the main players turned in excellent performances.

But what these productions are about is unity rather than one performer standing out - and the cast worked really well together to achieve this.

t Sinbad continues until Saturday August 5, 7pm nightly plus 2pm on Saturday. Box office: 01603 630000.