Time for Carrots

10:04am Saturday 10th May 2008

The hunt is on for an 11-year-old to star in a revival of Carrots, the musical dedicated to Dr Barnardo

A MUSICAL about Dr Thomas Barnardo should be internationally famous by now. Yet the great Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice chose the London East End saviour of orphans as the subject of their first show in 1966, and failed. It took until 2005 for the pair to attempt a full public performance for The Likes Of Us.

Tommy Steele abandoned another version in the 1960s.

A 1980 attempt, Barnardo, was described as "a mindless East End knees-up with indigestible dollops of nauseating sentimentality" by critics with James Smillie under fire as the kindly doctor.

Make way for producer/director George Critchley of PMA Productions who is on the look-out for Carrots, an 11- year-old singing, dancing, acting star, and his orphan mates.

Auditions are taking place at The Karen Heritage Dance Studio, Stockton, on May 26 with application forms available from www.pmaproductions.co.uk. George aims to stage Carrots at the Georgian Theatre Royal, Richmond, during the week of August 13-16 using a show which began life in the late 1970s.

Middlesbrough-born former Stokesley Primary School headteacher Peter Canwell created Carrots, which focuses on the tragic ginger-haired Victorian boy, John Somers, who inspired Barnardo.

It started life as a school production and blossomed into a Billingham Forum show in 1979 and has clocked up hundreds of school and youth theatre versions over the years.

George, who has forged a reputation at Richmond for creating four years of audience-pleasing pantomimes, confesses that it was the persuasive powers of sprightly 78-year-old Peter Canwell "who chased me for 18 months to produce Carrots. He and I agreed to go for a workshop-style production at Richmond.

"I'm looking for an average-sized 11- year-old boy or girl and if they're a little bit under-nourished it'll help. I'm open to an interpretation if a girl comes along and she wows us, then I will cast her. I want this project to be a big noise in the North-East because this is a fantastic opportunity for a potential young actor," he says.

He doesn't mind if youngsters who apply don't have much stage school experience but is keen for cast members to have good singing voices. "I was going to contact local choirs at one stage because there are some really good numbers and foot-tapping chorus songs which I'll need about two teams of 12 supporting cast to take on," says George who is using Karen Heritage's school premises at Stockton for auditions because she is the show's choreographer.

He was down in London this week looking at 60 actors to play the role of Dr Barnardo. "I've got some people in mind, but because 99 per cent of actors live in London I'm going there. I may still go for a talented local actor," he explains.

Another reason for the trip south is that the producer will need to recruit a dialect coach to ensure that North-East youngsters sound like they could be auditioning for the West End version of Oliver!, a show which is dominating primetime weekend viewing on BBC1 at present.

"It's a fascinating opportunity for children of modern day to actually go back in history and see the deprivation and malnutrition that occurred in the 1860s and also to see it from a Barnardos' children's perspective and how much has changed in the last 150 years. There is a lot of good I'm trying to get out of this as well as being a business-minded producer.

"The Richmond theatre is a fantastic and intimate space with a feeling like sitting in your own front room and this is more about trying out the story and seeing if it works, then my plan is to put it on in Billingham Forum in 2009 to mark the 30th anniversary."

So why has the only really successful version of Dr Barnardo the musical failed to reach the West End?

"I've asked this question of Peter Canwell and it's something that's bothered me. No producer has taken it on. Cameron Mackintosh apparently came to see it, but at the time he was producing Oliver! and went with that.

Peter can't give me a reason why nobody else took it on."

Carrots probably suffered because a musical about a ginger-haired orphan opened on Broadway in 1977. "So Carrots does smack of Annie meets Oliver!," jokes George who is preparing to risk around £15,000 on the project.

"I am hoping to raise money for Barnardos and find some sponsorship,"

he adds.

Editor's Choice