Harry’s father is the chief executive of a cardboard box factory and he expects Harry to join the family firm and do a proper job, but Harry is a dreamer who is more interested in acting. We initially see Harry rehearsing a play with his fellow actors, but when he hears that his father has died suddenly he returns home to find that all is confusion and that there are rumours and suspicion about his father’s death. His uncle announces that there is going to be a takeover of the firm and that he is to marry Harry’s now widowed mother. The musical is, seemingly, loosely based upon Hamlet, though in a modern setting and with additional complications.
As in Hamlet, Harry uses his actor friends to put on a play, in which his uncle is to be accused of murdering Harry’s father. However, this is not the only use of this mechanism and it may well be that nothing is real. Perhaps the whole story is just a play within a play. Is Harry’s father really dead?
The musical is interesting and unusual but perhaps not as gripping as Shrewsbury School’s last two productions, Into The Woods and Frankenstein, which were of professional quality. The orchestral playing and the singing are very good, particularly Ben Edmunds as Harry. Well worth seeing.
[Alan Chorley]
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