REVIEW: Girton The Musical

Up a hill and down a long road lies a place unseen by human eyes, detailed only in myth, legend. Here lies Girton College, where yearly Girtonians descend on the Old Hall for a musical celebration of relative isolation and college solidarity. This year would prove no different.

Directed by Alastair Haig, with the brilliant Chug Hau Ng on the piano as the one-man orchestra, the play opens with the ever popular 'I'm ditching you,' which details the ever-so-common pre-university break up of two teenagers. Capucine May gave a refined performance, with Matthew Isaacs extending his lung capacity to maximum to reach musical heights we all thought impossible.

In a galaxy (relatively) far away

Within moments of this scene we are transported to toga adorned Ancient Greece, where gap year student Nick (Hussain Hassan) is faced with departing from his gender-ambigiuous friend Sophocles (Ximena Barker Huesca) to attend his first year at Girton.

Then suddenly we are witnessing an college entrant's interview, with one Tom Wang inventing a unique, and frankly bizarre, accent to play the eccentric Dr Tim Sinneran.

If none of this makes any sense to you, then you've probably got the right impression about the production. This isn't a show that prides itself on narrative flow. But then, who ever wanted narrative flow? Especially when you can enjoy original tunes that hark back years of Girtonian history and struggle.

Among the musical highlights included 'Phone Sex song' (with actions from Tom Sparkes and Michelle Spielberg to complement the lyrics) 'My Daddy's Rich' (sung by Dom McGough, reprising the role of the public school posho) and cucumber-wielding chorus singing the eternal favourite 'The Lesbians of Newnham.'

We are Girton, Super Girton!

These classic songs elicited many a laugh from the assembled audience, with old timer Girtonians always on hand to provide live commentary for the clearly quite confused Freshers present.

It wasn't slick, it was far from professional, but it was unapologetically, unrelentingly, emphatically Girton- with enough energy to induce a home crowd into the war cry of old: We are Girton! We are Girton! No one likes us, but we don't care!

5 stars (objectivity questionable)