Review
Published: Wednesday 18 August, 2010 by Venue Magazine
Ace Bath Youth troupe Next Stage Youth stage Denise Deegan's tongue-in-cheek jolly-hockey-sticks drama, in which the heroine Daisy, a barely-educated East-End girl, mixes it with the posh gels at Grangewood School for Girls. Daisy tries her utmost to be a perfect schoolgirl and prove to doubting staff and fellow pupils that she belongs at Grangewood.
Welcomed into the fourth year by madcap and poet Trixie Martin, Daisy is soon excelling at academic work, hockey and singing, not to mention being honourable and straight in all things. But she also encounters snobbery and deceit in the rich, conceited Sybil and school creep Monica - both of whom lie, cheat and conspire to get her expelled. Complete with late-night dormitory escapades, practical jokes, classroom drama, and treasure hunts, Next Stage Youth's version promises to be a high-octane romp. They're staging the piece as a 'play-within-a-play' performed by members of the Upper Fourth at Grangewood. The scenes change from classrooms to the hockey pitch, school assemblies to train carriages and dormitories to windswept cliffs: Next Stage's production will use The Mission's thrust stage to keep pace with the quick-fire changes in pace and scene, giving its young actors the chance to experience working with the audience on three sides.
Next Stage Youth is going great guns, with some 60 members and counting - hence the decision to cast the play three times over, with each cast performing on three nights, so that everyone gets a go under the lights.
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