Impulse Productions are an amateur youth theatre company, who never fail to impress. The last show of theirs I saw, Spring Awakening, could have been easily mistaken for a professional production. I therefore had high expectations for this production. Sweet Charity follows the escapades of Charity, a New York City dance hall hostess who longs for a man to fall madly in love with her and carry her away to a new life. When we first meet her she is being fished out of the river after another being left by another dodgy guy, and at the end of the first act (during which she finds herself the apartment of movie star Vittorio Vidal) meets Oscar, the first man to fall in love with her, who might just be Charity’s happily ever after.
Aimee Fisher as Charity was bright and bubbly, with an excellent voice and stage presence- and her performance was all the more impressive knowing she is only 14- but the show lacked a level of energy and the wow factor regular Impulse viewers have come to expect until the arrival of Oscar (played with excellent comic timing by the brilliant Jake Sharp) at the end of act one, which gave the show a boost. As an amateur production in small theatre there was no room for a live band, so instead a CD backing was used which, is possibly one of the reasons the first half felt a little flat. Though people may not think they know Sweet Charity, a large number of the songs have seeped into the communal conscience (Hey Big Spender and Rhythm of Life to name but two), and the CD backing just restrains the cast to performing the songs in the same way as hundreds of others before them.
All in all it was a fantastic amateur production, the cast were excellent and it was fun to watch, but unlike some of Impulse’s past productions it definitely felt amateur.
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