'Beauty & The Beast'

This was my first visit to see a Garforth production - a pantomime - and as I am a huge fan of panto, I was looking forward to it.

This was a traditional pantomime, directed with flair by Elaine McAleese, together with musical director, Kate Dixon and choreographer, Rachel Dixon, with all the ingredients to have the audience cheering, booing and 'aahing' in all the right places.

The story kept very closely to the original, with all the well-known characters for the audience to enjoy - we had a sweet Belle (Katie-Marie Armstrong) her (older! sisters) Ermengarde (Lynne Hill) and Esmeralda (Barbara Hawksworth) dressed suitably garishly by 'Primani'! and then we had Madame Fifi played very professionally by Gavin White. It is a tough job being Dame - you have to get the audience on your side from the moment you step on stage and Gavin did just that. I kept repeating his catch phrase for days afterwards (Bonjour, mes enfants) - excellent! Marcel (Mark Dixon) and Monique (Jane Archdale) ran a rather scary beauty parlour and their antics had the audience in stitches. Flora (Shelley Cooke) played an excellent Good Fairy and Joanne Jackson (an excellent Belladonna, the Evil Fairy) handled the audience heckling very well indeed. All other parts were played enthusiastically. I must make special mention of Rosie White (Prince Danton) - here was a 13 year old, taking her first principal role and coping very well, I wish her well in future roles. The sets, costumes and props were of a very high standard. The chorus and junior chorus were well drilled and their enjoyment spilled out to the audience. The last company song, 'I wish it could be Christmas every day' sent us all home in a real Christmassy mood - my congratulations to you all, on stage, backstage and front-of-house; I look forward to seeing you all in 2015.

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