I’ve been a primary class teacher and music teacher for 29 years, and in all that time Dazzle! is the best musical any school has ever performed! It’s fun, full of amazing songs, has a great heart-warming storyline – tinged with sadness but with a happy ending – and there are some very funny characters.
Most recently, I put on this musical in a primary school with 90 Key Stage 2 pupils, ranging from Years 3 to 6. I am in a rural mixed-age school, so our top class (Year 5/6) took the main roles, and the rest of the children were in the choir, dancing or taking some of the smaller non-speaking roles. Like most primary schools, we didn’t have any kind of budget to put on this performance, so we relied on parents and other members of the school community to help with costumes and staging, and the children made or collected all the props.
There was something for everyone, with enough main roles for our Year 6s as well as plenty of opportunities for children who wanted a smaller role. The story is gripping, with some well-timed jokes and funny scenes that our audiences loved and one sad and moving section of the story. The plot centres around Poppy Pringle, who inherits a run-down seaside funfair on Dazzle Bay. The musical tells how she leads an offbeat band of fun-fair kids to save it from the bad guys and the bulldozers – and restore it to its former glory.
There's a great variety of characters, ranging from the sweet hard-working Poppy (daughter of Fred Pringle, who owns the Fun Palace) and flamboyant Flossie, to the charismatic candy-floss seller. There’s also the hilarious Murgatroyd Megarich, and his side-kicks Sterling Squeamish and Primula Clackett. Megarich is a love interest for Flossie, who persuades him not to turn the fair into a development plot. If you have a child who is full of quick wit and likes a joke, Murgatroyd is the perfect character. With great one-liners and a lovely change of personality towards the end, he is one of my favourites. In my opinion, this was the most complex, but fun, role. He had a lot of lines that needed to be well timed, and his songs were tricky in places.
The script was well-paced, easy-to-read and understand. The scenes were a good length with lots of stage directions to help those teachers who have little experience of drama. The play is split into two acts, so we had an interval, although we could have gone straight through the whole play. It lasted around one-and-a-half hours.
With regards to the music, there are many songs compared to some other musicals, but I started either the week before SATs or the Friday of SATs week and found this to be just the right amount of time needed. The songs range from complex (‘Fairground’ calls in five parts, with a sixth at the end) to tear-jerking (‘I hear you calling me’), very funny (‘I love the music and the dancing’), and dramatic (‘Freeze the air’). There are some real heart-warmers in there too, and the play has a really beautiful, emotional finale.
Some of the pitching is high for the average primary school voice. The highest note is top F, of which there are many! I found that when the children were singing all together as a chorus it was fine, but some of the soloists struggled to hit the high notes, so either I brought passages down the octave or adapted lines slightly to avoid the highest notes.
The backing-tracks are great quality, with fantastic arrangements, but you will need a lot of practice to work out where the children come in at certain points. The piano score is great, with all the harmonies marked in, and I used this when teaching the songs. There are also band parts available. The very first time my school performed Dazzle! we had a small band, and it was incredible. I didn’t have any musicians available the second time, but the backing-tracks worked perfectly.
Dazzle! is a wonderful musical that the children will love and the audience will be entertained by. It will warm everyone’s hearts. I highly recommend it and believe that it could work in any primary school setting.
