It's no secret that I love musicals. My grandma happened to win tickets and a picnic hamper to the first wight proms event she obviously gave the tickets to me because she knows how much I love musical theatre and there would be some big names in the musical theatre world performing there. The likes of Kerry Ellis , Daniel Boys , Earl Carpenter and Rachel Spurrell were amongst some of the names that performed this year along side some local talent.
Wight Proms is an event on the isle of wight at Northwood House that I got to go to this year. I attended the musical evening which showcased some of the biggest musicals such as Les Miserables , Phantom of the Opera and loads more. The evening consisted of listening to a lot of local talent before the big names came out and did their thing which a few numbers included some local kids which was really nice to see.
When we arrived we picked up our picnic hamper that was included in our prize. Of course me being the queen of fussy I only ate a bread roll , cheese , jelly beans , strawberries and a brownie. The hamper was supplied from local food businesses on the island. The hamper also included quiche , pickle (do not get me started on that bloody pickle) , tomatoes , a weird mouldy cheese that tasted interesting and a of bottle water. The hamper was £38 and if I'm going to be totally honest there is absolutely no way I'd pay that much for some food I mean its great that it was all locally sourced but I just feel like I couldn't justify the price of it. The brownie was probably my favourite thing in that entire hamper , it was probably the nicest brownie I've ever had.
We found our little patch to sit on which we had a great view of the stage and absolutely no one in front of us. There was a small slope so we sat ourselves down with our picnic blanket and stayed there for the whole evening. The first lot of music we were greeted with was a local ukulele group who looked like that they were having a lot of fun onstage performing to everyone. We then had a performance from a singer songwriter called Polly Money who just had a guitar and sang some of her own original music. Then some young people who won a local performing arts competition did some songs from musicals. A local artist also performed his own stuff and it was pretty good but I can't actually remember his name.
The time the professional west end performers came on I was pretty excited to see what songs they would perform. It was a mixture of well loved classic musicals and the odd modern musical thrown in for good measure. I absolutely loved the mixture of songs les miserables that was sung before a break. Kerry Ellis was joined by local theatre kids whilst she sung This Is Me from the greatest showman and Daniel Boys was also joined by the same group of kids to sing songs from Joesph and the technicolour dream coat. It was great to see how involved these local kids were and its great experience for later on if they want to possibly consider a career in theatre.
Kerry Ellis was absolutely incredible and has one of the best vocals I've ever heard. I was so excited to see her perform live and she really didn't disappoint. Her performance of memory from Cats was amazing and I don't even like that musical but her performance made me like cats for a couple of minutes. I will from now on only listen to Kerry Ellis sing Memory.
The concert closed with a medley of songs from Mamma Mia which got everyone up dancing which was absolutely hilarious but it was also really lovely to see so many people in one place be happy and having a great time together.
One thing I will say is that the sound was absolutely dreadful. The whole time you could hear other peoples microphones when they were offstage and sometimes the microphones weren't even on at points. Apart from that one sound issue I very much enjoyed the evening and would happily go again next year. Wight Proms also did a comedy night and a last night at the proms concert too as well as the musicals prom. Northwood house was just the right size for an event like this and its a pretty setting to have it in as well.
