Our House

Based on the music of lengendary ska band Madness, college production in February 2009 was "Our House"....

It tells the story of Joe Casey, a sixteen year old facing a choice between a life of crime and a life of virtue. The musical brilliantly tracks both paths and we see the criminal Joe follow a life of increasing wealth and success whilst the virtuous one falls further and further into poverty and the wrong choices. However, all is well in the end and everyone who deserves to be happy ends up so at the end!

Once again we chose to have two casts, allowing more students to have speaking parts. Huge credit must go to the quartet of boys who played Joe, Jamie Rowlands, James Ormsby, Oli Clarke and Harry Facey. They were funny, danced really well but also managed to pull off difficult songs and to show a tragic side to his character as well. Joe's girlfriend, Sarah was beautifully played by Cleo Henderson, Beth Wash, Laura Murphy and Carys Goodright. However it wasn't just the central two who grabbed the audiences attention: Winona Guy, Imogen Choroszewska, Hetty Fruer-Denham and Rowan Stolton were both funny and moving as Joe's sidekicks, Ammo and Lewis. Great comic support also came from Lucy Bayliss, Verity Harvatt, Dulcie Cox and Leah Coulton.

The large supporting cast were very strong in choral sections and some stand-out moments were Carys Reading's Elvis, Pippa Spottiswoode and Hannah French's wonderful mothers and Violet Taylor and Ruby Lawrence who pulled off the very difficult task of playing Joe's dead dad. And who was that mysterious boat man at the start of the second half...surely not Chris Neve?

The audience thouroughly enjoyed Mr Neve's inventive set, and the exploding car and boat were particular highlights. Huge thanks to him and his team from the Construction Department who worked incredibly long hours to build and then move the sets. The music was re-constructed from the original Madness recordings by Penzance based Taw Taves Ha Donsa (Shut Up and Dance in Cornish) and Jonathon Plunkett, who also directed the show, whilst Keith Harris did a great job in operating the sound.