Connie Fisher's St. David's Day Return to Wales

West End Sound of Music star Connie Fisher swapped her nun's wimple for an adjudicator's hat at the Grand Theatre, Swansea on Saturday March 1 as a member of the adjudicating panel for the 2008 Welsh Young Musical Theatre Singer of the Year contest. During the evening Connie also made a welcome return to the stage where she was herself the 2006 winner of the contest before going on to earn stardom as the winner of the BBC's How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria talent show. 

After being greeted by rapturous applause from the audience in her native Wales, she treated the crowd to a rendition of Cole Porter's classic tongue twister, "The Physician" (first sung by Gertrude Lawrence in Nymph Errant in 1933). Then she returned to the score of The Sound of Music to sing "Edelweiss", accompanied by the Dunvant Male Choir, before completing her short programme with a virtuoso rendition of  Charles Strouse and Richard Maltby's "Everybody Wants To Do A Musical" - a song from the musical Nick and Nora she had performed on the same stage the night she became the Welsh Young Musical Theatre Singer of the year two years ago.

Miss Fisher's performance was the icing on the cake of a wonderful evening of musical theatre performing in the sixth annual staging of an event organized by the Dunvant Male Choir and sponsored by the Principality Building Society. Four young Welsh singers - Owain Llyr Williams, Christopher Orton, Catherine Mort and Laura Armstrong - who had all been selected for the final from 24 singers who took part in a preliminary round in January, delighted the Grand Theatre audience with a high standard of vocal performing and a wide range of musical material.

The winner of the title was 25 year old Christopher Orton, who hails from Chepstow and whose musical theatre credits include roles in the Watermill Theatre's productions of The Hot Mikado and Martin Guerre as well as Jason Robert Brown's Songs For A New World in Freiburg in Germany. His varied programme in the final consisted of "Streets Of Dublin" (from A Man Of No Importance), "What Is It About Her?" (from Andrew Lippa's The Wild Party), "Love To Me" (from The Light In The Piazza) and "This Is The Moment" (from Jekyll and Hyde). In each item he totally inhabited the character of the song and was vocally flawless - demonstrating that he is not only a worthy holder of the title Welsh Young Musical Theatre Singer of 2008 but also a performer to seriously look out for in the future.

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