Nutcracker Suite featuring human-sized plant life in The Vaults presents Sounds and Sorcery celebrating Disney Fantasia. Credit Hanson LeatherbyTo start the audience are given headphones for the audio immersive piece. As you move forward through the show you enter different spaces that have been set up with variations of video, set, lighting design and live performance. Kitty Callister’s design work was diverse and effectively created a different mood in each experience.
Entering the first space you lay down and watch kaleidoscope visuals on the ceiling and listen to an abstract soundscape echoing ‘we are the music makers’ the first orchestral musical piece then follows. This is an effectual start as it initiates a focus on the music, which is much inline with the film version of Fantasia in which the show is based.
The experience could have benefited from less interaction with the ushers. If there was use of the wonderful audio resource to instruct the audience, the participants could have remained completely immersed in the journey.
There was a huge emphasis on dance, clowning and physical theatre in the live and video work which was a highlight. The effort that had clearly been put in to create a multi sensory experience slightly cut the production short by not having more live artists. Doug foster’s video design was well executed and at its strongest in Night on Bare Mountain which was a dramatic, spellbinding and a successful end to the show.
The score did feel like the strongest element of the production and at times that overshadowed the production as a whole. However this is a show that is creative, diverse, fun for kids, relatable and nostalgic for adults and certainly brings out your inner child and is well worth a visit.
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