Cinderella

From the moment I entered Buckden Village Hall to be greeted by the guards, Hedgehog (Barnaby Lamper) and Teasmaid (Jo Oram) loudly announcing, by voice and trumpet fanfare the countdown to the start, I knew this was going to be a somewhat different pantomime. I was introduced and warmly welcomed by the Chair of the society, David Alexander who encouraged me to scan a QR code as they were not doing full printed programmes this year (an attempt to reduce waste). The online version was excellent with cast biographies and society information.

Director, Author, Composer and Musical Director Rowan Alfred, welcomed us all to the show encouraging audience participation from the start, a great way for us to feel involved. Fairy Godmother and narrator of the show, Kathryn Duncan set the scene in clever rhyming verse and the opening original composition musical number demonstrated plenty of strong and enthusiastic singing from the company and introduced us to the villagers with their colourful costumes and interesting names – Lumix Kodak, the photographer and Stella the Pub Landlady being two of my favourites.

The normal role of Buttons was replaced by Zipper – the local llama famer and Huw Nadin’s opening number, the Friends theme tune ‘I’ll be there for you’ was sung well and was well matched by the lovely gestures, and facial expressions of Emmeline Lyster as Fergus the Llama. The Dame, Nanny Nom Nom, was subtlety played by Tom Monkhouse with great audience participation especially with the ‘Ring my Bell’ running gag. He also demonstrated great singing in a recreation of Tina Turner’s ‘What’s Love Got to do with it’ along with Rhys Nadin as our RP accented, loveable Prince Adam and Emma Driscoll as the Wicked Stepmother, who once again demonstrated good singing and stage presence.

Throughout the show there were some very clever adaptations of songs. After a lovely meeting of the prince and Cinderella, Caroline Cleghorn beautifully sang a very well adapted Deacon Blue song which became Dignity instead of Destiny and there was much laughter at the change of lyrics to Peter Gabriel’s hit Sledgehammer, which became Hedge-trimmer!!

Leah Blyth and Heike Riddle as the Ugly Sisters, Claminda and Belinda, did a great make-up routine with so much talc that we could smell it in the audience and performed in a number of good musical numbers. Their facial expressions and dialogue which was full of inuendo and double entendres had many adults laughing. The script, written by Rowan Alfred and Huw Nadin was very funny throughout, with just that right amount of humour for both the children and adults. I understand that the Saturday evening performance is just for adults, and therefore a little naughtier – I might be interested in that one next year.

I was pretty certain that the ending of this panto was not going to be traditional – after all nothing so far had been, so there was no surprise to have a ghost and then find that whilst Cinderella thought the Prince was lovely, but wasn’t going to marry him because they had only just met!. The three sisters and stepmother all hug and the Dame went off with the Prince! We then all took part in the singing of ‘Local Llama Farmer on the Local Llama Farm.’ And the audience left with big smiles on their faces.

Make up, costumes, set, sound and lighting were all of a standard that is not generally expected in a village hall production. This society also supports local charities and organisations by permitting them to hold raffles at their shows. 

 

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