Alice in Cuckoo Land

I would like to thank Bispham Castaways for the invitation to join them for their pantomime Alice in Cuckoo Land, which I attended on Saturday 16th December at their usual venue of Holy Family Church Hall. This was a varied take on the well known story of Alice in Wonderland and featured most of the expected characters from that tale. In this version, the evil Queen of Hearts hates Christmas due to her childhood experiences and is determined to ban all mention of it from her realm, even having Santa locked up in her dungeons! It is up to Old Mother Wobbly, her daughter Alice and some friends from Wonderland to dissuade her.

This was a directorial debut for Linda McKenzie and a fine job she did with this piece. Full creative use of the available space was made and the action flowed well within and between scenes – the audience were never left without something to focus their attention on, even during scene changes.  These were as quick as they could be, given the space restraints of the venue; well done to the backstage team of Jane Squire and Pippa Parnell for keeping things moving swiftly along. The scenery had to be fairly minimal due to the space but was effective, clearly setting the venue for each piece of the action. Costumes and makeup were particularly good for this production. Technical director Ian Fleetwood with Alan Westhead and Cordy Jones on lights and sound respectively were slick with their cues throughout and the whole show ran seamlessly. Prompt Evelina Davies was required on several occasions and she was generally on the ball, ready to assist as needed. It’s a delicate balance as a prompt to ensure you’re not jumping in too quickly to enable natural script recovery by the actor but also not leaving them hanging so long that it becomes awkward. There was one occasion I felt the prompt could have come in sooner and the actor was rescued by a fellow castmate instead, but the rest of the time I felt the prompt timing was spot on.

We all know that pantomimes rely on the great British public interacting with the cast for them to be really successful; despite there only being a small audience for the show I attended, they were certainly interactive and if anything, there were some children at the front who were overly enthusiastic and very vocal throughout, shouting out to the cast to tell them and ask them things (thankfully all pantomime related!) I must congratulate the cast as a whole for the way in which they handled the boisterous front row and all their interjections; they made good choices regarding when to fully interact directly with them, when to acknowledge generally and move on and when to ignore. 

Lesley Amos kicked things off as the mysterious, silent, bag carrying mouse who wandered all over the hall (often during scene changes) clearly looking for something. Apart from a line right at the end, all Lesley’s acting was physical and she did a brilliant job of this, eliciting laughter from the audience and keeping them guessing. Nicely done Lesley! Sue Hope’s Chester the Cat was fabulous throughout with her energetic, feline movements and gestures matched by a perfectly selected tone of voice and dialogue delivery. Sue had great stage presence and her positive energy projected right to the back of the hall – an excellent all-round performance! Katrina Shuttleworth played the title role of Alice and I enjoyed her characterisation. She had a lovely manner when interacting with the audience in character, particularly when unscripted with the aforementioned front row! Katrina didn’t let her need for the prompt or some muddled up lines throw her at all, she remained calm and in character at all times; well done! The dame was Alice’s Mother Wobbly played by Andy Welsh. Andy looked the part and brought some real humour to the role through facial expressions, posture and some comedic line delivery. I personally would have preferred him to play the role without the high-pitched voice but that’s just an artistic choice difference and it didn’t ruin the performance for me. I enjoyed his different styles of interaction with different characters.

Hayley Price is a great character actor and gave a super performance as Floppy the White Rabbit, hopping all over the stage and wiggling her ears with great energy. She interacted very well with the audience, putting her amusing facial expressions to good use and displaying her competent movement and vocals during musical numbers. A lot of fun to watch! Playing the White Rabbit’s friend, the Mad Hatter, was Martin Thompson and I have to say I thought this was his best work to date. Having shown improvement and increased confidence in Labour Pains earlier in the year, this was another step up in performance and his characterisation was really spot on! From his style of dialogue delivery to his movement and physical characteristics this was a great, believable performance which I really enjoyed.

Comedy duo Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber were superbly portrayed by Nicky Alladice and Katie Ashworth who had great chemistry and brought solid, very amusing characters to the stage. From accents and cadence of speech to movement to funky dance moves, they were both thoroughly entertaining and I found myself looking forward to their next scene. I felt for them in their extended front of curtain scene as they were getting so little reaction from the audience but I’d like to reassure them this was nothing to do with their delivery of the jokes and congratulate them on not being fazed by the lack of response. They were the servants of the Queen of Hearts, played brilliantly by Charlie Towers – what a great baddie and thoroughly deserving of every boo she got! Charlie absolutely owned the stage in all her scenes and dealt particularly well with the front row. Her characterisation was strong and there was an obvious character arc and change in demeanour in the closing scenes as the Queen (spoiler alert) is convinced by the others that Christmas isn’t actually all that bad! Charlie belted out a fabulous rock song which totally suited her character – a well-rounded performance to be proud of! Ian Dodd played the Christmas obsessed King of Hearts and his character made an excellent contrast to that of the Queen. I felt this was one of Ian’s strongest performances I’ve seen and I liked the balance he struck between being the more timid partner in the marriage but also not allowing himself to be completely walked all over, standing his ground regarding his love for all things Christmas. Ian struggled with his pitching but sang wholeheartedly and gave his full effort to the performance as a whole.

Santa Claus and the Knave of Hearts played by Harry Chambers and Tracy Johnson were smaller roles but pivotal to the storyline and both were fully invested in their scenes. There were moments I wasn’t sure whether Harry was struggling for lines or it was part of his character as Santa had lost his memory (long story), I feel it was probably a bit of both but overall, the story was told and both characters’ roles in it were clear. As a general note for future improvement, the Knave’s dialogue tended to be delivered in a very slow, drawn out way, I think because they were trying to dramatically emphasise what they were saying but it would be more effective to deliver the lines at a normal pace and use inflections and volume for emphasis.

Thanks once again for a thoroughly entertaining evening which my guest and I enjoyed very much. I look forward to next year’s productions by Bispham Castaways.

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