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Joining this strong cast are some Queen's Theatre Hornchurch, Cut to the Chase favourites, as in Philip Reed and Emily Gardner who performed alongside The Chicken Shed performers at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in their production of Alice on the Underground before it transferred to The Queen's Theatre, Hornchurch.
When it transferred to the The Queen's Theatre, Hornchurch the cast was joined by Chicken Shed supporters and Queen's Theatre Hornchurch, Cut to the Chase members, Jane Milligan and Wendy Parkin.
The show was altered slightly for its transfer to the Queen's Theatre Hornchurch, notably an extra song was added, which is sung by Jane Milligan, the set was redesigned by Rodney Ford and is much larger. And featured extra cast members as in Jane and Wendy.
The cast in the show are all wonderful, each cast member brings their own special blend of talent and emotion to their roles. Some of the cast members play numerous roles throughout the show, and a few of them have some very quick costume changes to make, these are notably Jane Milligan, Emily Gardener and Rebecca Chapman.
From a planet point of view, it is great to see Jane, Wendy and Phil playing such varied roles in the show.
Phil plays a couple of great characters, such as the next door neighbour who is paranoid about his car, Father William, the drunk Irishman who sings a beautiful number about his past and his loves, a seedy business man and a gospel singer. Phil also plays the guitar throughout the show.
Wendy also plays the guitar throughout the show, she plays a couple of characters during he show but the standout of them all has to be when she plays the part of a refugee/immigrant who is begging for money to feed her baby. The baby is portrayed as a piglet and when Alice asks why does the baby resemble a pig, Wendy then sings a haunting number about the discriminations they face and it is a superbly acted scene.
Jane also plays a few roles during the show, but her main part is playing the role of Sammy, Alice's older sister. The start of the show, we see the family getting ready in the morning, Sammy and her brother are messing about and do the usual big brother/sister routine on Alice as she tries to get ready for school.
When Alice goes missing, we see another side to Sammy, she and her mother go off searching for Alice and sing a beautiful number about Alice and how they miss her and want her to come home.
Later on we see Sammy singing a solo about how she regrets the way she treated Alice and as usual Jane sings this really well. It brought a lump to my throat!
Jane also plays the part of a prostitute and looks stunning in her policewoman's outfit! This section of the show is when Alice stumbles across the seedy world of prostitution and it gets a little bit dark and disturbing, but is brightened considerably by the antics of Emily Gardner as Duchess and her fellow prostitutes played by Jane and Rebecca Chapman.
Under the Musical Direction of Jo Collins, the show has some catchy songs that will get your foot tapping, there is the gospel song - The Jesus Line and Looking for Love, which was featured on the Chicken Shed 30th Anniversary Album.
To sum up the show, it is a magical masterpiece that demonstrates how clever and forward thinking the Chicken Shed is, they have brought the world of performing arts and entertainment forward to so many people who have not had the opportunity to do so before. The show tackles some issues that many people wish to sweep under the carpet, but Alice on the Underground tackles them head on and shows us all what is going on around us. The main theme to the show is looking for love, Alice is looking for love and is not aware that she has it all along, but that she didn't see it plus her family did not show their love.
Go and catch this show before it ends on the 18th, if this show catches your imagination I would thoroughly recommend going to see other Chicken Shed performances and see their good work for yourself.
Amanda Westlake
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