THE BROTHERS GRIMM SPECTACULATHON wings2fly Seymour College CPA Until 13 Jan 2018 Review by Brian Godfrey There are now quite a few performing groups for youth popping up in the Adelaide area, but the majority of them tend to concentrate on musical theatre. Wings2Fly Theatre is a fairly newly formed group trying to break the mold by offering one-week intensive workshops and rehearsal of non-musicals. Their second production was Don Zolidis’ “The Brothers Grimm Spectaculathon”: a great title for a very funny play. Three narrators take the audience on a breakneck tour of ALL of the fairytales collected by the famous brothers, being careful not to infringe the copyright or irk the anger of a certain cartoon mouse’s magical kingdom. There is hilarious calamity along the way especially with the audience helping out with a horror movie soundtrack and other audience participation to tell the story of Hansel and Gretel; and a cast of three trying to retell the story of Cinderella due to the other cast members not feeling very well after eating tainted snacks backstage (don’t worry, it’s in the script, not for real). Company founders and the directors of this production Michelle Nightingale and Alicia Zorkovic are both very accomplished and highly qualified performers and drama teachers, which shows in their handling of the 18 youngsters in the cast. They have taught their cast well, especially when it comes to comedy, which the cast handled fairly well. There was the odd slightly hushed voice and a little breathless speeding of dialogue, but that is expected from some youngies when first treading the boards. Overall, the entire cast were wonderfully funny, enthusiastic and incredibly energetic with good performances from all. However, there were some standouts: Flynn Doyle, who as Dwarf (sorry, Little Person) 2 is forced to cross dress and become Snow White; big voiced Timothy Whalan; Benji Hughes as the cutest little Hansel ever; the very funny Harriet Berry as Rumpelstiltskin (a lot more delightful than Robert Carlyle in “Once Upon A Time”); and the Narrator who singled out this reviewer as ‘a genius’. It’s always heartening to see that the future of the arts will still flourish and groups such as Wings2Fly strengthen our hope.