How to Make Snow

 

How to Make Snow

the little red company & St Lawrence’s College

ERPAC St Lawrence’s College

20th – 22nd December 2012

 

Reviewed by Rebecca Matthews

 

How to Make Snow is a wonderfully entertaining production, which follows a young boy’s quest to learn how to make snow for his Grandad.  The journey he goes on brings him into contact with all kinds of colourful characters who reminisce about the time they last saw snow, and give him their advice on how to go about this epic quest… in the 40-degree heat of Australia.

 

It’s a brand new show, created especially for the Christmas season, by Daniel Evans (Writer & Director) and Naomi Price (Producer and Director of the little red company). How to Make Snow enjoyed a very short, sweet season over just one weekend so if you missed it, I’m afraid that a little piece of magic has passed you by this year. But don’t worry, this creative team will be back again next year.

 

Such talent attracts talent, and this production was enhanced by the honest performances of Marco Ghikas, Bryan Probets, Mirusia Louwerse and Luke Kennedy, of The Ten Tenors fame. With musical direction from Kennedy & Michael Manikus, lighting by Jason Glenwright and design by Josh McIntosh, this production couldn’t fail!

 

I absolutely loved the visual overload that made this production so entertaining for all ages. There was no shortage of clues and visual delights for those who did not get the subtleties of love lost and love remembered in this storyline.

 

The company, which included a sizeable youth ensemble, was great. The choir’s numbers and some of the solos particularly were breathtaking. We may have turned up at a school to see this show but it was, in so many ways, much more than a school production. It was, in fact, exactly what you would expect from a school given the opportunity to work collaboratively with a professional production company. I was sitting there imagining all the hours these kids had given up to perfect their performances and it definitely paid off. I found it inspiring for my own children to see such a wide variety of ages and roles utilised in this play and hoped it might spark something in them; that they might want to be part of fabulous performances such as this in the future.

 

The play gave plenty of time for the audience to reminisce about their own experiences and to remember the good times. Our own white Christmas memories came suddenly and vividly to life, and my boys and I have since talked for days about many a Christmas past, and our family and friends in other places.

 

With the danger of a spoiler alert, let’s just say it was a happy ending and I was the fool in the front row, sobbing; crying my eyes out at the beautiful spectacle of a white Christmas in the searing heat of Australia.

 

When this beautiful little production returns – and it will – go and see it for yourself, take the kids and the grandparents and I promise you’ll be reaching for the sled, and the tissues.