Winterhill School: The Accordion Shop Review

From the actors being too young to fully understand the characters they are playing to the play running for too long, I have seen a whole host of reasons for a school play losing its enthusiasm half way through.

This wasn’t the case when I went to see Winterhill’s production of the National Theatre’s The Accordion Shop, which tells the story of the riots that struck fear into London’s residents back in the summer of 2011.

At only half an hour long, the play was just the right length for both the actors and actresses and the young family members in the audience.

The subject resonated as well. 2011 wasn’t a lifetime ago and you could tell that youngsters involved understood the magnitude of the events that unfolded that summer.

Regular talk about text messaging and social media coupled with the fact that a lot of the characters were the youths who caused the riots meant that the large majority of the actors could relate to the story and the characters, half the battle won.

But there were a few actors who played older characters.

Georgia Buxton stood out as an older lady who witnessed the events from across the road and was often the voice of the narrator who allowed scenes to unfold. Her confidence in playing an older lady and the emotion she put into the role really stood out.

Ryan Holmes took the part of Mr Ellody, an oldish man who owned an accordion shop on the main High Street in Lewisham, known locally as ‘The Road’.

His dismay at the fact youths didn’t touch his shop despite it having the most valuable content really highlighted the gap between modern youths and the older generations.

The police officer (Olivia Holmshaw) and the news reporter (Ruby Windle) offered a perspective through different eyes.

The police officer had grown up in the area and knew a lot of the people involved, the news reporter had been sent in from a different area and her off camera words showed that she had no real interest in what was happening.

The ensemble of actors who played the youths did so to perfection, describing how they all received a text message from an unknown number the night before, and how that escalated into a full blown riot with looting and, ultimately, the death of the old lady.

The minimalist approach taken with lack of props and a surrounding audience around the stage really did work well, with all actors projecting their voice so all sides could be heard.

The play is set to grace the stage of the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield on March 25, with a sell out looking likely.