Tag Archives: Magazine

Show News

Well hello! Dolly is back where she belongs!

A classic Broadway and West End hit!

After its recent box office busting return to London’s West End, we’re so pleased to be  bringing Hello, Dolly! back to the Amey Theatre in Abingdon.

Imelda Staunton in the recent West End hit revival.

Hello, Dolly! made its first appearance on Broadway in 1963 and has been a favourite of audiences across the world ever since. Filled with instantly recognisable numbers such as ‘Put On You Sunday Clothes’, ‘Before The Parade Passes By’ and of course, ‘Hello, Dolly!’ itself.

The show tells the Story of Dolly Gallagher Levi, a marriage matchmaker from Yonkers, New York, who is dead set on making a match for herself, She has her eye on Horace Vandergelder, the well-known half millionaire, who really is no match for the determined matchmaker Dolly. It’s one of the funniest musical comedies you’ll ever see.

Check out the cast of principals for this show here.

Show News

We’ve got a real beauty for you this time! Stunning!

Mark your diaries today for this Spring 2026 spectacular.

We’ve been lucky enough to gain the rights to perform another debut show for Abingdon in April 2026.  You’ll want to be sure to get your tickets the moment they go on sale.

Beauty and the Beast at the London Palladium.

Adapted from the Disney animated movie, Beauty and the Beast tells the story of an unkind prince who has been magically transformed into an unsightly creature as punishment for his selfish ways. To revert into his true human form, the Beast must learn to love a bright, beautiful young lady who he has imprisoned in his enchanted castle and earn her love in return before it is too late.

The show made its live-action debut in New York in 1994, and then ran on Broadway for 5,461 performances for thirteen years (1994–2007), becoming Broadway’s sixth longest-running production in history at the time of closure. To date, it is still the tenth longest running show.

If you have children, you’ll want to share the magic of this live musical with them, and if you don’t have children, don’t worry, grown-ups will love this enchanting show too.

Show News

Another brilliant debut show arrives in Abingdon

Coming to Abingdon in October 2026, Come from Away is a hugely successful musical, with book, music and lyrics by Irene Sankoff and David Hein, that opened on Broadway in 2017 and ran for over 1,600 performances to massive critical acclaim. It transferred to the West End of London in February 2019 and ran until January 2023. Touring productions moved around the US and UK from 2023 to 2025.

In addition, professional productions continue in Canada, Japan, Australia and Ireland. Its many accolades include the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Musical, the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Musical, the Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Music, and seven nominations as the 2017 Tony Awards, including a win for Best Direction of a Musical.

The show is set around the shocking events of 11 September 2001, when terrorist attacks using airliners rocked the USA. As a result, all US airspace was immediately closed to planes, and suddenly the small Newfoundland town of Gander had 38 international aircraft and over 7,000 passengers diverted to their small airport. The story that you will see unfold shows how the frightened, confused passengers and the townspeople gradually come together and find common bonds that create lasting, life-affirming friendships.

Come From Away

The show includes great joy and compassion, new-found love, as well as tragedy and heartbreak. It’s an experience that will lift you up and show the depths of our shared humanity. We’re so excited at the prospect of performing this theatrical debut show in Abingdon.

Features

How we choose our shows – it’s not as easy as you might think

When new members join a musical theatre society, full of wide-eyed enthusiasm and ideas, they often ask the same question.

“Why are we doing Oklahoma! None of my friends have heard of it. Why don’t we do Wicked, or that new production of Frozen – we’d pack the audience in for those.”

At this point, the members of the society’s committee generally sigh and then gently explain the reality of amateur theatre to the innocent new member.

It’s restricted!

First, at any time, the range of shows available to amateurs is limited. If a professional production is being staged, or even being considered, the show will usually be restricted. For Abingdon, the problem is often greater, because we’re considered to be within the gravitational pull of London. This means that, if a professional producer is even heard whistling the overture of a particular show, it’s likely to be restricted. The same show may be available for an amateur production in Yorkshire, but in Abingdon it will be off the table.

Some shows are never released for amateur performance, even when they’re not being performed on the professional stage. These are the crown jewel shows, like Phantom of the Opera or Les Miserables, that aren’t generally keen on amateur interpretations. The rights holders will usually laugh scornfully if a society is silly enough to even enquire about them. Oddly, there’s often a children’s version of these shows that will be available for school productions.

A happy chorus

Another important consideration when selecting a show is the range of roles involved and the opportunity for the chorus to be on stage. There may be a great ‘box office’ show available, but if the cast involves four people for most of the show, it would not be a popular choice for the thirty members in the chorus. For a society like AOS, the members’ show fee is a vital part of the show income, so the bigger the cast the better. A show with a cast of four people will cost almost as much to stage as a show with 50 people, and this makes it an unlikely choice.

Will she fly?

Finally, it can be difficult to stage some shows on a budget. For example, Mary Poppins would be a lovely show to perform (if it was available for amateur performance), but the audience would rightly expect to see Mary fly in from the windy clouds and land on the Banks’ doorstep. This moment is truly magical on the West End stage, and even professional touring productions will have the necessary flying equipment, but for an amateur society it would add thousands to the show budget and so rule it out.

It’s not that there aren’t shows available. Amateur societies are constantly being contacted by rights holders offering amazing deals on shows that no one has ever heard about. Then it’s our turn to laugh scornfully. But in general, it’s the rule of supply and demand, with all the power in the hands of the rights holders.

Now, put on your cowboy hat and let’s get on with rehearsing Oklahoma!

Gallery

AOS gallery now reaches all the way back to 1958

Archives can be dusty, dreary places and that’s certainly been true of the AOS photo archive. For years, shelves full of photo albums from decades of our show history had been gathering dust on a kind member’s spare bedroom wall. And the saddest part of this archive is that no one ever got to look at it.

Our first show, Iolanthe from 1958

So, over the last few years, we’ve gradually been working through this archive digitalising as much as we can.  It’s been a huge task, but we’ve managed to scan paper photos and 35mm slides from every show we’ve been able to find.  For some shows we’ve found very little, but for others there have been fifty or more images to capture.

Oklahoma 1991
Our production of Oklahoma! from 1991.

We’ve also managed to find programmes for nearly every show, so we’ve scanned the front covers and cast lists, so that you can check back and see just how many people have trodden the boards (as the saying goes) over the 65+ years that AOS has been entertaining audiences.

It’s sad to see those few Covid years recently that created the first break in performances for decades, but you can also see that we’ve come back twice as strong and even more determined to bring the best of musical theatre to Abingdon.

All this content is now hosted on the Flickr web site, and is also held in a secure cloud storage area.  You can visit the show archive here.

Hired Man 2003
Performing Howard Goodall’s The Hired Man in 2003.

So if you have a few minutes to spare, why not take a trip down memory lane with us.

Features

Hand to Mouth: the financial tightrope of musical theatre

In the far off olden days, before on-demand TV, boxed sets, Netflix and hundreds of freeview channels, families would often go to the theatre for entertainment. Of course, the cinema was also popular, but live theatre attracted huge audiences and thriving amateur theatrical societies were to be found in most small towns.

Today, many of those societies have disappeared or are struggling to survive. Audiences have shrunk, members (especially men) are harder to recruit, and production costs have gone through the roof.

Soaring costs

This last issue, the cost of putting on a show, is a critical one, as smaller audiences mean lower ticket sales and reduced income. The danger is that eventually ticket sales don’t cover the costs, and the society is forced to cut back on performances, which makes it even harder to find new members. It’s a spiral that many never recover from.

In Autumn 2024, AOS staged the musical Guys and Dolls for six performances, running Tuesday to Saturday evening, with an additional matinee performance on Saturday afternoon. The rights to stage the show for those six performances, plus the hire of the theatre, cost us £14,600. At an average audience ticket price of £17.50, this means that we needed to sell over 835 tickets just to cover those initial costs.

Hire of the musical scores cost over £2,500, while costumes, lighting, sound and scenery cost another £3,500. In total, and after being extremely careful with every penny spent, Guys and Dolls cost just over £36,000 to stage. This means that we needed to sell over 2,000 tickets just to break even on the show. That’s a tall order for a small market town in rural England in the twenty-first century.

Selling out

If every performance was completely sold out, our seating capacity of over 2,500 for the week would mean we’d be in profit for the show, but that’s very hard to achieve these days. This means that any loss on a show has to be borne by the members, which means increasing the show fees we have to charge the cast, and that makes it harder to recruit the new members we need.

This is the tightrope we walk today – as a small charity keeping local musical theatre alive, trying to manage costs, while filling the theatre, and attracting new members. And we do this for two major shows each year. It can be stressful, to say the least, and it’s only something we do as a hobby, so it’s a good thing that we love musical theatre enough to keep balancing along that tightrope for year after year, determined to keep musical theatre alive in Abingdon. Just don’t look down!

Take a look at our show photo album for Guys and Dolls here.

Features

Top 5 audition tips to help you get that part!

So the audition dates have been published and you’re thinking of going for a principal role. Perhaps you always succeed and play every leading part, or perhaps you’ve never managed to win the role you think you were born to play? Whichever camp you’d place yourself in, here are our top tips for getting through the audition and winning that role.

  1. Be honest with yourself (but dreaming’s good too)

Listen to the director’s description of the character and read the lib carefully. If the director’s looking for an eighteen year old soprano and you’re a fifty year old alto, it’s probably not the right role for you. Similarly, if the part is a tap-dancing leading man and you have two left feet and an in-growing toenail, you might want to think twice. But if you can picture yourself adding something to the character, then give it everything you’ve got.  So, don’t be too hard on yourself – just be realistic.

Auditions1

2. Be prepared

If you really want a role, it’s a good idea to try to learn the audition pieces and practice the songs. You need to sell it to the audition panel and doing this while looking at your lib or forgetting the song is not ideal. Learning the lines shows the panel that you want the part enough to have put in some effort. You should also have a good sense of the character you’re auditioning for. Read the whole lib and look for clues about the person you’re portraying, and listen carefully to the director’s description too.

3. Don’t focus on the wrong things

Using props, costume or wigs in an audition is almost always a mistake. When you’re nervous and on the spot, it’s so easy for props to get you mixed up or confused, and costumes and wigs aren’t what the audition panel are looking for. Put your effort into inhabiting the character without distractions. Focus on the acting and singing and the panel will fill in the missing bits.

Auditions2

4. Nerves can be your best friend

Most people find auditions more nerve-wracking than an opening night. There’s something about being so obviously judged that reduces the most experienced performer to a quivering jelly. So, since you can’t avoid the nerves, use them instead. Plan for them in advance and think about how you can use them to express emotion and depth in the audition pieces. This approach can work for acting and singing, but you need to have thought about how your nerves will affect you and how and where you will use this. When you need power or emotion, your nerves can be the fuel that makes your performance electric.

5. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket

If there are two parts that you can reasonably audition for, go for both – even if you really, really want only one of them. It never does any harm to show an audition panel what you can do. Auditioning for a second part shows more of your acting ability and more of your voice. It gives you longer to shine. And of course, if you don’t get the part you have your heart set on, you may get the other part. You’ll be disappointed for a time, but at least you have a part in the show.

Those are our top five tips, but if you fail despite these words of wisdom, there’s bound to be a place for you in the chorus. No show is a great show without a great chorus. Even when the principals are excellent, a poor chorus performance can ruin the atmosphere. So be a part of that well-oiled machine that is a great musical production – you’ll still have a wonderful time.

Features

Farewell to a much-loved past AOS president

A message from Joy Skeels, Chairman of AOS:

AOS would like to acknowledge the passing, on Thursday 4 September 2025, of a long-time supporter of the society, HRH Katherine, Duchess of Kent – or, as she liked to be known less formally, Katherine Kent.

Duchess of Kent

Katherine was a regular attendee at AOS shows for many years, but in 2010, when Margaret Long stood down, she accepted our request to become President of the Society and remained in that role, while her health allowed, for seven years. She was often seen at rehearsals, popping in and not making any fuss at all. Her love of music and singing was so evident.

After she stood down from her role as President, she remained a Patron of AOS for the rest of her life, always attending our shows  when she was well enough. Her enthusiasm and, in particular, her desire to encourage the younger members of the Society, was delightful to see.

Katherine’s memorial service was held at Westminster Cathedral on Tuesday 16 September 2025, in the presence of the King, the Prince and Princess of Wales, and other members of the Royal Family. Ann Turton, President of AOS, and Joy Skeels, Chairman, received invitations and attended the memorial service to represent the Society.

Those of us who were lucky enough to know Katherine will always remember her happy smile and enjoyment of the productions she attended, even in recent years.  She will certainly be missed.

Show News

Charlie wows sell-out audiences in Abingdon

There’s surely nothing more rewarding for a musical theatre company than to play to packed, appreciative audiences every night, and that’s what we were lucky enough to experience for our production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory this April.

More than 2,000 people were squeezed into the Amey Theatre over our six performances, and they certainly seemed to be having a great time. What was particularly satisfying was the number of children, with their parents and grandparents, in many cases having their first experience of live musical theatre.  They were clearly loving it.

But of course, just as quickly as the set goes up and the performers take to the stage, at the end of show week it’s all put away again – scenery becomes scrap wood ready to be turned into something else, and costumes and props are put back into storage.  After months of rehearsal and hard work to make it all run perfectly, we suddenly move on and it all becomes a memory.

With just a few days rest and time to audition new members, we begin work on our next show.  To learn more about that, why not visit our Current Productions page, and don’t forget to put the dates in your diary.  It’s going to be wonderful all over again.

And you can see more photos from this production in our online gallery.

Show News

Guys & Dolls? That should do Nicely-Nicely, thank you.

Coming to Abingdon from Tuesday 29 October to Saturday 2 November 2024.

Book now

Guys and Dolls is a classic musical comedy, with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser and book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows. The show premiered on Broadway in 1950, where it ran for 1,200 performances and won the Tony Award for Best Musical. The musical has had several Broadway and London revivals, as well as a 1955 film adaptation starring Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando, Jean Simmons, and Vivian Blaine.

Packed full of show-stopping musical numbers, it tells a story of low-life gamblers and hustlers in New York City, where finding a safe site for a poker game is the highest priority and a man will bet on anything that moves – including a woman. Even when that woman is a member of the Salvation Army determined to save his soul.

Here’s just a taste of the atmosphere, as Nicely-Nicely attempts to persuade his gambling cronies to stop rocking the boat.