Gerry Parker: Curtain up on three spectaculars

Some years ago I had the pleasure of taking a very minor role in a musical production in Brunel's old train shed at Temple Meads in a show based on the life and work of the great engineer.

There was an enormous cast of somewhere between 2 and 3 hundred people, all of whom were miraculously kept in order by the director Vikki Klein.

At present Vikki is fully involved in Backstage Productions presentation of Rent that can be seen at the Olympus Theatre July 11th and 18th.

Anther company that Vikki has been closely associated with, The Minis Theatre Club, occupy the same theatre all this week until saturday July 4th with The Wiz. This terrific musical adaptation of the ever popular Wizard of Oz story won several Tonys when it first appeared on Broadway in 1975.

Dominic Wallis plays The Wiz with Lucia Frantini as Dorothy and Jessica Bell, Mikey Perryman and Jack Hannay- Manikum filling the roles of her three faithful companions Strawnman, Tinman, and Lion. Lis Durbin is the director, Jacquie Bell the choreographer and Chris Northam musical director.

Ring 07740864905 for tickets but do not delay because they are going fast.

If you added up all those involved in The Wiz and Rent together they would not add up to a half of those connected with The Wigan Girls a community musical production under the guidance of Barbie Davies. Here is a lady who has plenty of personal experience of working with a very big company having played the lead in the Brunel musical at Temple Meads. She had to work with even greater numbers in 2000 when she produced Thornbury Plays 2000 a project that involved around 1.000 people.

The Wigan Girls is based on the true story of a group of Victorian Pit-Brow lassies who fought for the right to work. Janet Halfyard Senior Academic at the Birmingham Conservatoire and a former pupil at Marlwood school, where Barbie Davies was her drama teacher,developed this story into an A Level exam piece. She and Barbie Davies then expanded it with arrangements of original music by Nigel Davies and staged it in 1989 as a school production.

Barbie has now developed it even further to accommodate some 300 performers aged between 6 and senior citizens. Under her direction this version can be seen between July 7 and 10th ,7.15 start at the Leisure Centre, Thornbury presented by Act- Arts in the community in Thornbury.