MUSICAL REVIEW: Hetty Feather ★★★★

Hetty Feather
The Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham
Saturday 3rd May 2014

Hetty Feather is a creation made by Jacqueline Wilson, the award winning author who brought us most notably Tracey Beaker. Known as 25629, with moments later named as Hetty Feather by Matron Bottomly, the show opens up with Hetty on a dangled trapeze, giving the audience an insight of her life, with what follows after being a sequence of a Train Journey, with Hetty playing her mum, where she gives up Hetty to the Foundling Hospital, ran by Bottomly. What Hetty does tell us at the beginning though is that she does not know her real name that her mum gave her as a child, and who her real mum actually is, as she is fostered by Peg, a single mum with already one child, Jem.

Hetty is fostered by Peg along with Gideon, 25621, and throughout the first half, the two of them become close, along with Saul, another of Peg's Children, who we find out later was also a child who went to the Foundling Hospital, until he becomes 6, and then is taking back to the Foundling Hospital. The First Act of Hetty Feather is truly inspiring, with not only the look of the set, which has the trapeze hanging in the middle, and cloths and ropes around the outside, which soon makez a circus style setting, but also with the high energy acting seen on stage. The whole music and acrobatics is just a brilliant added extra to the whole proceedings.

Act Two opens with Hetty back in the Foundling Hospital, now she has turned 6, and now has two missions, to find Gideon, who she has been separated from because the Hospital splits up boys and girls, and also to get back to the circus to see Madam Adeline, as Hetty believes Adeline is her real mother. What follows in the Second Act is Hetty disguising herself as a boy, to soon be found out and sent to the attic of the hospital, and also running away, after a day at Hyde Park, to find the circus, and ending the act with finding out who Hetty's mother really is. The whole show is brilliant, the music is catchy, the acting is fantastic, the acrobatics is awe-inspiring and the set and lighting is beautifully created.

Overall, Hetty Feather is a brilliant family show for any Jacqueline Wilson fan, and anyone who likes a bit of family fun, this show is definitely not to be missed, as its on tour now.

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