Alice in Wonderland

This was my first visit to a Shaldon pantomime for some years and I was not disappointed. I last saw them in action at the old Carlton Theatr , which has since been demolished and replaced with the Pavilions, which is a multi purpose venue. I know a lot of local theatre folk have had much to say about the Pavilions (positive and negative), and I was looking forward to my first visit there. I have to say I fall into the positive camp. Lovely front of house areas lead into a nice fully raked auditorium seating 240 with full technical facilities. The stage is on the flat and has a decent playing area, and the big advantage of having flying facilities. It has taken the local amateur groups a while to adapt to the space and venue, particularly the one draw back of not having an orchestra pit or even any decent space front of stage to house musicians. Shaldon have adapted very well indeed and I think this venue is a vast improvement on the old Carlton, and has certainly enabled the company to add a real professional polish to their productions.

The band problem was solved for this show by having the 4 piece band at the back of the stage behind the scenery and cloths, and only visible at the finale. This worked very well indeed. Maybe it might have been a problem where interaction was required between players and percussion but in this script that wasn't overly necessary. The band was superb and there was a nice jazzy feel to the music which was kept very uptempo by Chris Matanle.

Alice is not the most pantomime friendly of stories but limelight have woven the characters (both familiar and invented for this script)  into a broadly familiar story but with strong pantomime traits. There are many named roles so it requires a large company and there was enough talent available that not one of the roles was weak. This was a very strong cast indeed and they presented one of the better amateur pantomimes in this area.

Predictably, those characters that talk to the audience and get them shouting out, are the ones that dominate and here, these two roles were given to very strong performers who dominated the production. Gary Abrahams must be the best amateur dame in this area and his Dame Millicent was superb. He passed comment on the action, rolled his eyes in disapproval at events, and commanded the proceedings like a pro. He was ably supported by young Bradley Swinbank as the principal comic Wally the Jester. His nice line in daft jokes was very popular with the audience. These two formed the strong backbone of the production.

However, there was much to impress with the other performances. The company is just too big to mention everyone, but Cat Chadwick as the stroppy Queen of Hearts was very vocally impressive as was Vanessa Hurley as the evil Knave of Spades. Ellie Finnerty as Princess of Hearts and Josie Parkin as Prince of Diamonds were the love interest and also gave great vocal performances. The white Rabbit opened the proceedings and Ro Stanley was entertaining as the always in a hurry messenger caught up in the action.

This story and script appealed to me because there is a strong sense of the surreal threading through the action with some slightly bizarre characters and one of my favourite scenes was the Mad Hatters tea party which also featured some very colourful props. In fact the props for the entire show were well thought through, and must have taken a lot of preparation. The entire visual feel of the production was of a professional standard with excellent cloths, and colourful costumes that I believe were made in house and were a great credit to the wardrobe team.

Technically this show was first rate. Lighting and sound were excellent, and those flying facilities proved handy here, as the company were able to fly a character backwards and forwards across the stage. This was very impressive indeed and the team were rightly very proud of this achievement.

The large ensemble and dancers and juniors were well drilled and performed with energy and life in some well known numbers. Musical choice was very good and suited the story perfectly and the choreography was matched to the abilities of the company and was neat and well thought through.

Direction was tight and imaginative and the show moved along at a nice pace. Linsie clearly understood the more surreal aspects of the story and her feel for the visual story telling aspect was really good.

I have been very positive about this show as I greatly enjoyed it. Do I have any criticisms ? Well, yes, but these in no way detracted from the enjoyment of the audience but are worth a mention.

I know that some of the company felt the show was about ten minutes too long, and this was certainly the case. However because it was of a high standard that didn't really matter, but the running time could have been cut without loss of content, by cutting the length of many of the musical numbers. I always feel that with panto one and a half minutes is long enough for a musical number. There is no real need to run the entire number, so by cutting many of the numbers, that ten minutes could have been lost quite quickly. I also felt that some of the transitions between scenes could have been tighter and perhaps covered with more music and some action.

These really are minor comments however as I had a great evening, as did the audience , and I was mightily impressed with the standards that this company have managed to achieve in their new more professional surroundings.

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