06 May 2026
Deborah Heath is at the Sandpit Theatre for Best Theatre Arts’ latest production…
Local youth theatre school Best Theatre Arts have long impressed me with the range and ambition of the performance projects they offer their members.
Highlights from recent years include two productions for National Theatre Connections, two highly entertaining large-scale productions at the Roman Theatre Festival and new musicals co-devised by members of ‘The Company’ – their actor musician group. It is The Company who feature in ‘The Flare’, a brand new musical written by Megan Jenkins with a score from Rob Castell.
The premise of ‘The Flare’ is strong – three contrasting groups of school children go on a camping trip where disaster strikes in the form of an energy spike which renders all technology and machinery useless. In an updated ‘Lord Of The Flies’-style story, the children have to work out how to manage in the face of disaster when their adults and tech are no longer available. However, the play is so much more than this; exploring the changing nature of communication and specifically how adults and young people need to work together to break down barriers.
Megan Jenkins’ script is superb; well plotted, with a huge number of well-rounded characters (essential for a successful youth production) and treading the delicate balance between recognisable humour and harrowing drama. When developing the script, she asked members of the cast “What frightens you?” And “What makes you angry?” – their input is clear.
Rob Castell’s score is suitably atmospheric with some catchy numbers played extremely well by multi-talented members of The Company. The upbeat opening song hit the ground running immediately showing the dichotomy between parents telling their children they are “having the best years of your life” whilst actually making them miserable by piling on the pressure to have fun!
All adults in the play were represented en masse by a large group of unison-speaking performers dressed in grey. They moved as one body, for example, to represent the ill-fated Miss Peabody. Making the adults faceless like this was a strong concept that drove the youth-led focus of this story.
The main school children were extremely well performed by actors from the age of 10 up to 18. They all did a great job of portraying a range of emotions and managing group scenes with some touching two-handers moments. A highlight for me being the scenes about eating disorders which was sensitively written and executed. The play was directed and produced by the well-established team of Dawn Hudson and Lisa Schulberg and I was very impressed with the way they got the best from their young cast.
Music director Amy Cordina also has much to be proud of – there was some impressing singing and harmonies throughout.
Drew Hewett’s huge scaffolding set was a brilliant multifunctional piece transporting us around the various settings of the play. It was at atmospherically lit (Adam Bottomley) and complemented with strong sound design (Kayne Sharp).
This weekend’s performances which celebrate a year or so of devising are merely the start of Best’s ambitious project. The next stage is to tweak the show and then perform it again with a smaller cast next summer, before rolling it out to schools, groups and organisations from 2028. They have teamed up with Tip Of The Iceberg – a well-established Theatre In Education company to help deliver it far and wide.
‘The Flare’ is already a very strong show. As it develops I would like to see more integration of the instrument playing actors and some refining of the ensemble sections.
The actor-musician show genre, a personal favourite of mine, is still developing.
OVO are a great example of a professional company who do this well and on the West End stage, ‘Hades Town’ combines a traditional musical with this format with actors playing instruments on stage. To my knowledge, Best are currently the only youth theatre school in the area who specially offer a training platform for this style of theatre and this move is highly commendable. I am really excited to see this show develop. Their aim was to spark conversations between generations about how is feels to grow up in a modern world and I am sure that they achieved this. Now all they need to do is bring this springboard to as many young people as possible! All the best Best!
