Beauty and The Beast

This Panto was an updated version of the classic fairy tale originally written by a French novelist Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villenuve in 1740.  It has been rewritten many times over the years and Kailea has brought this right up to date. She had even named two of her comedic characters Co and Vid! There were some modern ideas and with possibly some slightly, rather over-graphic adult humour for the children in a panto audience.

The heroine was Rose who true to tradition is captured by the beast and falls in love with him. She was played by Rhianna Melton a very talented young lady who looked and sang beautifully and was an accomplished ballet dancer, treating her audience to a beautiful ballet. It is not very often you see the leading lady dancing en pointe. Definitely someone with great potential. The Beast (Mark Robinson) who has been treading the boards on the amateur stage in the area for several years now was confident in his role and captured his character well. His transformation scenes were handled well and the two small boys in front of me were certainly spell bound during the scenes. There was a Panto dame in the form of Molly Muffin-Top (Al Rogers) another well know local face, but this was the first time he had played dame. I think he had been learning some tricks from the masters of the art and certainly picked up on all the usual innuendoes. Her side-kick was the amusing Jake (Lewis Jordan) who was certainly into his hip-hop dancing and rap music. I also particularly liked the swimming gala comedy scene with Molly, Jake and some of the other cast.

The ‘baddie’ was Hugo played by James Wood who was intent on marrying Rose. He looked like the charming hero but was in fact wanting Rose to play the dutiful house-wife. Rose was too independent for that! She had no ideas of settling down and preferred to read her books and go travelling on adventures.  Rose’s father was Victor (Julian Ochwat) who came across as a kindly old man, but who surprised everyone in the audience with his live performance of Andrea Bocelli’s  ‘Con te Partiro’. He certainly had a wonderful singing voice and one to wow his very appreciative audience.  The Director, Kailea had certainly made good use of the talents of her accomplished cast members. The comedy duo of Richard Ashby and Tony Stokes played the two ‘baddie’ hirelings. They worked well together, especially when they got their names muddled up. Often in panto getting things wrong are funnier than when it is all word perfect!  The other characters and ensemble included many juniors, all did well to enhance the production with their singing and dancing.

Henley had invested in three beautiful flown scenery backcloths made from a lightweight material, which was easy to change and looked incredible. The fabric had actually been printed with high resolution photos giving a three-d effect for a village street, forest and castle scenes. These were also supplemented with some additional props. The pace was maintained by some quick scene changes although the script itself was perhaps slightly too long for a young audience. The sound and lighting were effective and worked well. The costumes were good, colourful and with some inventive animal characters.  

Well done to all the cast and crew for giving us and your village audience an entertaining evening.

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