Aladdin

This year, Sale Nomads transport us to the Far East for a classic (if slightly dated) telling of the pantomime favourite, Aladdin!

As expected with any Sale Nomads panto, our eyes were given a feast thanks to the excellently built and strikingly painted scenery.

The production ran very long and could so easily have been trimmed, we got lots of choreography and this is coming from a dance enthusiast who loves nothing more than to indulge in a high energy routine, tap ensemble, kick line or pas de deux - but even for me, I felt there was just too many pauses while we wait for the dancers to finish yet another routine which, after so many, hindered the overall pace of the show.

We got an excellent selection of musical treats with the usual panto mix of pop songs (Pharrell Williams; ‘Happy’) and Disney (‘Love Is An Open Door’ from Frozen and ‘Friend Like Me’ from the Disney animated film version of Aladdin). The band added some much needed life to the production. Though it’s nice and quite refreshing to see a band of this size for a pantomime, I didn’t feel the advantage of this seven strong ensemble was utilised to its full potential.  
Music to aid scene changes and those iconic pantomime flourishes to compliment the action would have aided the performance - such as some melodramatic chords (with crashes of thunder) for each of Abanazars entrances/exits and so on to contribute to the ambiance.

Alice Gregr was a confident and experienced principal boy who impressively held and commanded the stage throughout her scenes with classic pantomime bravado and delivery.       
For a society to be fortunate enough to have such a talented Dame as Derek, regardless of what the script asks of this role, he was not exploited enough in my opinion. Derek is a master of his craft who gave us a wonderful Widow Twanky who I’d have loved to have seen more frequently throughout the production.

My feeling is, an amateur panto needs to play/be adapted to expose the strengths of the group/cast, I don’t think this factor was considered enough when deciding how to present this production.
Energy is a mammoth ingredient to any pantomime which was a little on the soft side on the performance I saw.

Jill Mallen has to be congratulated for coming to the rescue and stepping into the boots as one half of the police comedy duo with a little over a week till opening night! From watching this performance, at no point did any of her scenes, songs or sketches appear under rehearsed.

The highlights were undoubtedly the tremendously (built in house) scenery by Bryan Shakeshaft, Derek’s Dame and who’s hearts can fail to melt when the tots do their turn!?  

We had fulfilling performances too from Susan Bloor (Slave Of The Ring), Martin Wiggan’s Genie and Ivor Snowdon as the evil Abanazar.

Panto is a perfect opportunity to take risks, let your hair down and go a bit mental – that’s one of the many reasons I love it. My overall feeling was that the production team had relied too much on an out dated script which is in much need of a face lift to be kicked head first into the 21st century.

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