Alice in Wonderland

It never ceases to amaze me the amount of time and effort the Ellesmere Devils Panto Society put into turning the sports hall of the Ellesmere Centre into an auditorium.  As well as building all their own scenery and painting beautiful backcloths they have to build the staging which included a trap door. They also create a substantial proscenium arch complete with rich red curtains. 

The construction of the in-house scenery and props was splendid; the making of which was attributed to a large and obviously talented team. Some of the extremely large pieces such as the Mad Hatter’s tea table (complete with massive tea pot and ‘crockery’) and the Tart Making machine gave the stage crew a real challenge.  Two or three splendid backcloths and colourful costumes (Brenda Bendon, Liz Puddick and Kimmy York) completed the picture.

The music was on tape and the singing was fine.  The Choreography team (Jess Bendon, Tess Garner, Mindy Tidwell and Jules Anderton) made the most of the limited space working several of the routines front of tabs.  Lighting Tokkan-fx and Sound Tokkan-fx and Richard Fisher was not without its problems on the first night.  Dialogue too was a bit shaky in places and Jane the prompt was active at times.  

James Nicholas’ adaption was based on Andrew O’Leary’s Alice in Wonderland script which had quite a few of the expected characters augmented by ‘children’ from the orphanage and a Trunchball type headmistress.  The twenty-one cast plus Martin Attwood the show’s stage manager (who was certainly kept on his toes by the Queen) were full of enthusiastic energy.  

Stand out performances came from James Nicholas first rate as Dame Cookie and Trisha Highton absolutely brilliant as the Queen of Hearts. Two nice performances came from the show’s love interest Tess Garner as Jack and Olivia Appleby as Alice.  In Wonderland: Jess Bendon was suitably nutty as the Mad Hatter with Alison Smith as March Hare and Katey Dennis as a very bouncy Sunny Bunny; Libby Burton and Carol Collins as Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee bounced on and off and Chris Wiseman made a great DJ Caterpillar. Sandie Wilson as Dormouse and Liz Wood as Cheshire Cat linked the story together.  Good support too from Nigel Clark as King, Richard Fisher (Miss Hatchett) Sam Clarke, Frances Fitsall (Orphans), Holly Weir and as Cards Tegan Courtney-Moore, Jules Anderton and Angie Attwood. 

This society’s commitment to their annual pantomime is awesome. Alright it was a long show and maybe the first night was not without its problems but they rose above it and at times embraced it to comedic effect.  The audience certainly showed their approval. 

Thank you for inviting me along and for the warm welcome from Martin and the front of house team.

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