Harrogate Theatre
4 Dec 2004 – 2 Jan 2005

Company – Sophie Bould, Hadley Fraser, Alasdair Harvey, Mark Hilton, Rebecca Thornhill

Director – Hannah Chissick
Choreographer – Nick Winston
Musical Director – Nigel Lilley
Designer/Lighting Designer – Paul Sheard
Production Co-Ordinator – Ollie Stables

Putting It Together Harrogate Theatre Studio
Directed by Hannah Chissick
Choreographed by Nick Winston

8th December Yorkshire Post Nick Ahad

Director Hannah Chissick calls it “an extraordinary feat of engineering”.

Modest that she is, she does not call this show a feat of extraordinary directing and a stunning feat of cramming so much sophistication, class and talent into a tiny space of Harrogate Theatre’s Studio.

Had she done so, one could not accuse her of arrogance, merely realism. For that is exactly what this show is. Based on an idea Chissick borrowed from her travels in America, the show combines the elements of a great night out – theatre, dinner, music and dance and puts them in a one-stop shop.

Taking the music of Sondheim, Chissick directs five actors telling the story of young love, lust and a loveless marriage, through his music.

Following champagne and canapés in the intimately decorated bar of the theatre, the audience – which numbers no more than about 40 – is directed to the studio of the theatre where it is blindsided by the start of the show thanks to a committed performance by Mark Hilton, who appears as an incompetent, officious volunteer usher. Hilariously reminding the audience that they should not use mobiles, click their tongues or shuffle their seats, he rapidly breaks into song and the show is under way.

An intelligent, cheeky, funny way to begin the show, this introduction sets the tone for what is to come.

Using the whole of a small stage, choreographer Nick Winston does a stunning job of shifting the actors around the stage and Chissick is at her best with a piece of directing that is incredibly witty.

Brilliant performances by Rebecca Thornhill and Hilton find them standing out head and shoulders – their number together Everybody Ought to Have a Maid gives both a chance to display their acting talents, but that is no discredit to the rest of the cast who pull in the audience in this intimate setting.

The highly charged and erotic number Bang! leaves the audience almost as heaving and sweaty as the post coital young couple who perform the song and dance in a highly stylised fashion. This style combines with lighter moments such as Getting Married Today performed with amazing energy by Thornhill.

Putting It Together touts itself – justifiably – as the most sophisticated night at the theatre in Yorkshire.

It can confidently add to that claim that it is also a dazzling and brilliant piece of theatre.

8th December Yorkshire Evening Press Charles Hutchinson

INTIMATE DINNER THEATRE WITH A SHARP EDGE

The Side By Side By Sondheim dinner nights and cabaret evenings were such a wickedly delicious success last Christmas, artistic director and self-confessed Sondheim nut Hannah Chissick decided to put it together again.

Each night in the black-box Studio this festive season, Bower’s Bistro (of Cheltenham Crescent), Chissick’s cast of five and piano-playing director Nigel Lilley are serving dinner theatre, preceded by champagne and canapés in the circle bar. It is not cheap at £45 a ticket, but as an alternative office party with all the sexual heat, prickly wit and arguments you could crave, Sondheim’s musical theatre revue Putting It Together is the most sophisticated Christmas entertainment.

After a main course of pan-fried red mullet with pesto linguine or roast rump of lamb in a woodland mushroom jus, we are ushered into Sondheim’s cynical milieu, an adult America far removed from the romantic, childhood fantasies of the Mother Goose pantomime downstairs.

Whereas last year’s show had an urbane narrator, Putting It Together is moved onwards by a singing waiter (Mark Hilton, who swaps his initial guise of a nervous Harrogate Theatre volunteer for a smart New York barman). While he is on call for increasingly bitter drinks, Nigel Lilley twinkles away beneath fairy lights, a bar stool to his side and steps either side of his platform.

Hilton serves two wide-eyed young lovers, Sophie Bould and Hadley Fraser, and two battle-scarred veterans from the love field, Alasdair Harvey and Rebecca Thornhill (last seen in Yorkshire as the screeching Lina Lamont in Singing In The Rain at The West Yorkshire Playhouse).

Nick Winston’s swish, sassy choreography captures this prowling, competitive nocturnal world. Sondheim’s themes of lust and deceit, playing away and marital frustration, facelifts and face saving – drawn together from disparate musicals of dazzling, sour wit, waspish wordplay and frankly tricky tunes – acquire an intense, frictional focus in this intimate, elegant setting.

8th December Northern Echo Steve Pratt

Last year’s dinner theatre in the intimate surroundings of the Studio was a resounding hit, so a sequel was inevitable.

Attempting to repeat something successful is a dangerous thing, although it helps when you’re working with composer Stephen Sondheim’s material.

The previous choice, Side By Side By Sondheim, is better known than this year’s musical revue Putting It Together, but the new show hangs together better as a dramatic piece. Numbers from some of the biggest hit shows are worked together into a loosely connected narrative about life, love and loss.

Staging a musical like Oklahoma! in such a small space would be sheer madness but it makes sense with Sondheim. His lyrics, witty and perceptive, are as important as his music. Having them performed at such close quarters gives them all the more impact.

The size of the audience – around 40 a performance – also gives an intimacy that no “proper” theatre can. There’s also the unique atmosphere of an evening that moves from champagne and canapés in the bar into the Studio and dinner (prepared by Bower’s Bistro of Harrogate) and then on with the show.

The production values are as impressive as anything you’d see in the main house, in terms of both West End performers and the staging itself. Nick Winston’s choreography makes the most of the small space to avoid a concert feel, while Paul Sheard’s design and lighting ensure that the show looks good.

Sophie Bould, Hadley Fraser, Alasdair Harvey, Mark Hilton and Rebecca Thornhill are the superb singers who shine both collectively and in individual numbers it would be unfair to single out. .