The Musicians (and Karamazoo)
The Drum Theatre, Plymouth
Weds 18th - Sat 21st February at 7.45pm
Tickets: £6
Box Office: 01752 267222;
Plus:
Friday 2nd April 7pm (Tickets £5)

Right, for this to work, you'll need to use your imagination.

Youl'll need to sit and imagine you're listening to Tchaikovsky's 4th Symphony in F Minor. Don't know what is goes like? No problem - you can use the links on the left of this page to hear it.

Now, having got the idea of what it sounds like, you can safely take in the concert performed by the Ridley Road School Orchestra at the European Festival of Youth in Moscow.

This hapless collection of musicians have prepared painstakingly for the prestigious event, and they arrive in Moscow full of excitement and anticipation.

Alex (Lee Stapleton) is our unlikely hero

Their leader is conductor Roz (played in this show by Sarah Rae). Our Roz is a self-confessed 'tight-arse,' and appears on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

And who can blame her? Her orchestra is disunited, disjointed and disgruntled. "We're shit and we know we are," is the anthem they sing to themselves.

And it gets worse...because one of them has smuggled a joint into Russia in her instrument case and all their instruments are impounded by customs at Moscow Airport just a few hours before the concert.

Enter our unlikely hero...the concert hall's cleaner, Alex (Lee Stapleton). This young Russian lad is mad-keen on British rock music, and Pinball Wizard is his favourite song of all time.

Roz explains to him what it means to her to perform Tchaikovsky's 4th Symphony in F Minor, here, in Moscow, where it was first performed in 1878.

The Show Must Go On!

So Alex cooks up an idea...the concert CAN go ahead after all - with a bit of imagination.

It's the evening of the concert, and the hall is packed. On comes the orchestra to take up their seats. Roz starts to conduct, and the orchestra begins to play. Without instruments.

Making music: Roz conducts her orchestra

At first, there's silence, and then the sound of the symphony wells up until it fills the auditorium. At the end, the applause rings around the venue, and the concert is hailed a triumph.

The motto of the story? If you all muck in together, anything can happen.

The play is only 40 minutes long and it's great fun. The 35-strong cast - all aged 11-20 - threw everything into it and fully deserved the enthusiastic response they received from the audience at the end.

The play was written by Patrick Marber, and it will be staged at the Drum again in April as part of the nationwide Shell Connections Festival which links top writers with young companies.

Karamazoo

Before the Musicians, there was a 30-minute monologue, 'Karamazoo,' performed by Becky Allen.

Written by Philip Ridley, it has Ace (Becky) trying to arrange a date with her boyfriend via mobile phone.

She's called 'Ace' because she is Ace; she buys her shoes from 'Shoozy for the Choosy;' and gets her hair done at a beauty salon called 'Narcissus R Us.'

But during the monologue, it becomes evident Ace isn't the cock-sure, self-confident girl she thinks she is.

It's a remarkable performance by Becky, who I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot more of.