Lost and Found

Lost and Found: The Voice Project performed in Norwich City Hall

Lost and Found
The Voice Project Choir, Norwich City Hall

Lost and Found review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 8 December 2014

Norwich’s fine City Hall has seen many dramas in its time, but nothing like the exhilarating range of emotions stirred by the Voice Project’s latest.

Lost and Found was ambitious, mainly set in the 1930s, in which the 150-strong audience were led on a promenade through committee rooms and the magnificent council chamber to experience their ‘memories and imagination’ concept.

Music was frequently minimalist, with repeated motifs such as ‘you, me, are already ghosts’ and sung, whispered and chanted by this aptly costumed, versatile choir led by co-directors Jonathan Baker and the inspirational conductor, Sian Croose.

It uplifted the spirits, soaring and echoing through acoustically perfect spaces, before moving into introspective, spooky, surreal, flashbacks of grim past days. One sequence was based on the 1795 Norwich Patriotic Society Manifesto, ‘we believe that the great end of civil society is happiness.’

Collective voices from the past cried out to us today, warning, urging as we build our futures. It will stay in the heart and mind for a long time, which is where a first-class theatrical ensemble’s great work should live.