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Life at The Little Theatre column: Music is woven into drama

Read the latest updates from Southport's Little Theatre.

Zainab Noor

InYourArea Community, Zainab Noor

— 3 min read
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Life at The Little Theatre column: Music is woven into drama

Kathy Felton-Aksoy as Florence Foster Jenkins (picture: Fletcher Hill Photography/SDC)

By Jennifer Corcoran and Andrew Sloman

Last weekend, performers from around the continent gathered in Rotterdam for the 65th Eurovision Song Contest.

Twenty-six acts battled for the votes of professional juries and members of the public, with Italy pipping Switzerland and France to the pole position, winning bragging rights and the opportunity to host next year’s festivities.

Eurovision always brings to mind celebration and collaboration through music and the timing is apt when looking back through our history as we often welcome musical societies to the Little Theatre around this time of year.

Southport Dramatic Club are known more for presenting plays than musicals, although our famous family pantomime is always packed full of singing and dancing, and our youth members have been presenting a musical to open each season for the last 18 years and hope to do so this year with Fame!

Music is woven into drama in many ways; this can be played in the background to offer atmosphere, or cover a scene change or it can be a more overt feature of the piece.

Examples of this are characters who are singers.  Ten years ago, in February 2011 we brought you Jim Cartwright’s Rise and Fall of Little Voice.

Little Voice is a shy, softly spoken Yorkshire lass who seeks solace in her records and has a natural talent for impersonating singing stars such as Judy Garland and Shirley Bassey. Deborah Bloom excelled in the titular role.

Her dominating mother was played by Kathy Felton-Aksoy who in turn played a very different singing leading lady in Peter Quilter’s Glorious! Staged in May 2015, it tells the tale of socialite and amateur soprano Florence Foster Jenkins who was less of a natural!

Deborah Bloom as Little Voice (picture: Fletcher Hill Photography/SDC)

The musical taste of characters can pinpoint their era and speak to their character. This was the case in two of our 2018 productions.  In One for the Road, the various vinyls of John Denver drive disenfranchised Dennis Cain to destruction.  

Some months later, we were shown how the unmarried young mother’s in Be My Baby were able to find hope and inspiration in the music of the modern girl groups of the 1960s.  The songs they listened to were brought to life by on stage singers to add depth to the experience of the audience.

Sometimes this is the vision of the director, occasionally the playwright has indicated the addition.  The latter was the case when live singing rounded off the 2019 opener, One Man, Two Guvnors.

We are lucky to have so many multi-talented members including Tony O’Keeffe who played the aforementioned Dennis Cain as well as acting and singing in One Man, Two Guvnors.

When he is not treading the boards at the Little Theatre, he can often be found playing the skins as the drummer in The Shakers.  The Shakers are the resident band at the iconic Cavern Club in Liverpool and entertained at the Little Theatre in their Mersey Beat evening in 2018.

Tony O'Keeffe (picture: Fletcher Hill Photography/SDC)

The Shakers are delighted to be getting back to performing and details of their upcoming gigs click here.

Keep checking our website and following our social media for confirmation of booking tickets for Fame the Musical running August 24-28 2021.

To keep up to date with news and plans for the Little Theatre in Southport, Merseyside and find out the latest information on when we may be able to open click here or follow on Facebook and Instagram.

You can also see some special lockdown performances and a virtual theatre tour on our new YouTube Channel – search for Southport Little Theatre.

Southport Little Theatre is at Hoghton Street, Southport, Merseyside

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