Beauty and the Beast. A Pantomime

As Assistant Representative for NODA, it was my great pleasure to attend the recent pantomime production of Beauty and the Beast: A Pantomime at Brantham Village Hall. This marked my third visit to the venue and it truly felt like I was coming home. The hall was filled with an enthusiastic and excited capacity audience, creating a wonderful atmosphere from the outset.

I was warmly welcome by the Chairperson and Producer for this show, Tina Burns and was given a large, beautifully designed programme. Front of House volunteers worked tirelessly, greeting audience members, selling programmes and raffle tickets and ensuring everyone was comfortably seated.

The minimalistic set, described in Pippa Revell’s Director’s note as a giant storybook set magically inside a black box proved to be highly effective. Backing tracks were clearly carefully chosen and they supported the musical numbers, which were very well choregraphed by Frankie Swan. The Musical Director, Jaquie Lewis must be commended for achieving excellent singing and pleasing harmonies. Costumes, make-up, lighting and sound effects were all of a very high standard.

The cast were incredibly talented and clearly enthusiastic and their enjoyment was infectious. While all cast members should be very proud of this wonderful show, there are some stand out principal roles that deserve mentioning: Belle was superbly portrayed by Lilia Adams, combining strong acting with an excellent singing voice. Gaviscon, brilliantly played by Paul Morgan as an arrogant man, clearly only in love with himself. Gaviscon and his sidekick, Louis, portrayed by Izzy Spiers provided some of the evening’s most memorable moments and are to be highly congratulated. Dame Bonnie Baguette, hilariously played by James Wetherall (thank you for choosing me to be your next husband, by the way!) and her son, Brie Baguette, expertly played by Mark Hinson, demonstrated terrific chemistry, delivering fast paced humour and innuendo with confidence; I particularly enjoyed the bread/cake scene – very clever and very funny! David Chilton brought Belle’s father to life as a loveable, nutty professor as he played Professor Phillipe extremely well. The Beast, ferociously played by Roger Weeley was very well cast and showed terrific contrast as the angry, frustrated Beast who is gently and lovingly transformed by Belle. Lisa Butler played the French Eclairy Fairy gently and very well; she oozed goodness and we knew there was going to be a happy ending with her around. Sacre Bleu was enchantingly villainous and developed a super ambience with the audience whenever she was on stage.

Blackouts were handled smoothly by the backstage crew, with music maintaining momentum.

Huge congratulations to Pippa and everyone involved for a truly delightful and superb production. It was a privilege to witness such high-quality amateur theatre in Brantham, well done!

 

 

 

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