“This year’s crop of BOVTS students are undoubtedly a talented bunch and within the obvious constraints of casting a play with diverse ages amongst a group with reasonably homogenous ages turn in a very entertaining performance of this once banned Soviet era play. . . This adaption by Deborah McAndrew of Nikolai Erdman’s 1928 play, The Suicide, gives the original Russian a non-specific, but metropolitan UK setting with characters drawn from all over the kingdom . . . This is a highly enjoyable production that will be a good stepping stone for all concerned.”

” . . . Anyone old enough to remember ‘Family Favourites’ on the BBC Light Programme will be familiar with most of the songs. The reason is simple: it is stuffed full of memorable tunes that were regularly requested by and for our lads overseas. As ‘feel good’ numbers go it doesn’t get much better than, ‘Oh What A Beautiful Mornin’, which opens the show . . . As a revival of the, ‘here’s one I made earlier and it’s perfect’ kind, this is a ‘whee ha!’ of a production that will have you coming up for air as the nostalgia washes over you.”

“Here’s a question for all of us: why does theatre, which is labelled, ‘Children’s’, often involve greater freedom of creativity than other genres? It’s a question prompted having just seen Le Navet Bete’s new production of Dick Tracy. . . The great wonder of theatre is what you can get away with if done with conviction. It’s the great joy of companies like Le Navet Bete that they take our imaginations out for some vigorous exercise and they come back the better for it, having briefly rediscovered our inner child.”

The current tour, theTalent2015 as it is known, comprised two short pieces – The Murmuring and Mesmerics. The former is a sort of West Side Story rumble, all dirty vests and T-shirts but there are elements of Gustave Doré’s prison yard too with the protagonist’s endless circling, punctuated by elegantly choreographed fights, under a harsh white light from above. The incessant, repetitive booming music by Raime rattled every seat in the house and physically connected everyone to the action.