Dick Whittington

The last week before Christmas is an ideal time for a pantomime and so it was, with a glad heart, I travelled the torturous A19 to visit newly returning to NODA North society STAMP to see a production of Dick Whittington. We all know the story of Dick Whittington and his cat – or do we? This version wrote by three members of the group was a twist on the tail (no pun intended) and all the better for it.

It had all the elements of a traditional pantomime – the good fairy, the dame, the ‘daft lad’, the villain and the love interest couple; it had the conventions required by a panto of the evil entity always entering from stage left, the good fairy from stage right; the slapstick scene; the ‘ghost’ scene and the traditional end of show chaotic musical number. Where it excelled and was different from others was there were mistakes, some intentional, some unplanned but all coped with by a cast who were at ease with their fellow performers and did not take themselves too seriously and the audience loved them for it and vicariously joined in their laughter and corpseing.

Titular character Dick Whittington (Keiran Simpson) looked the young romantic lead and sang well alongside his faithful companion ‘Griz the Cat’ (Niki Walker) – I particularly enjoyed their interpretation of ‘But mostly me’ with Niki ‘meowing’ the sidekick lines

King Rat (co writer Harvey Johnson) excelled in his evilness and stage presence and timing of his pauses to good effect with excellent vocals to match. Special mention must be afforded to Katelyn Whittle as costume designer as Harvey’s costume looked ‘just right’ for a king rat.

King Rat had randomly chosen ratlings to spread his evil throughout the town in ‘Wassick’, ‘ ‘Plonker’ and ‘Dafty’ (Katelyn Whittle, Erin Pettimore and Mollie Clements respectively.) These three ensued many humorous moments with their interactions with King Rat.

King Rat’s chosen ‘spy’ to go out into the town of Brinkburg was ‘Rosalina the Rat’ (Molly Featherstone) whose heart wasn’t in it and opposed the King’s evil intentions throughout as she wanted harmony with the township. Molly acted superbly and sang beautifully on every entrance she had and it was soon apparent her character had fallen in love with Dick Whittington.

The good entity ‘Fairy Liquid’ (Leonie Reay) (obviously talking in rhyme) was a worthy opponent to King Rat and later we found formed a romantic attachment with ‘Dan Druff’ (co-writer Daniel Shilling) Daniel was simply superb in his facial expressions, timing of his one liners and movement alongside his ‘mother’ ‘Dame Mona Lot’ (director Christopher Perry) who himself stole the show with his outrageous costumes, ad-libs and fine vocals.

As we entered into the second act following ‘Alderman Fitzwarren’ (Alex Elliot) on his good ship ‘the Shields Ferry’ to seek the mystical golden ‘flour’ for his bakery. Alex was often the straight man to Dan Druff and Dame Mona Lot’s comedy routines.

Captain of the Ferry was ‘Captain Von Trash’ (Michail Burns) whose attempts to whip his extended crew, which included amongst others  first officer ‘Seaman Sam’ (Lucy Robson) into shape was fraught with difficulty. Shipwrecked on a French island (on the way to Whitley Bay….) the Lord of the Island (Luna Paolucci) speaking in authentic French accent offers half her wealth to the person who can rid the island of the rat infestation. Up steps Dick and Griz to save the day.

This was an excellent nights entertainment revelling in the little things going wrong and the smooth way the cast got out of the with their off the cuff ad-libs, with the audience loving every minute of it.

Highlights for me was the slapstick scene where instead of the traditional ‘baking’ a cake the Alderman, Dame and Dan Druff made up a secret formula of rat poison complete with dry ice foaming liquid, foam volcano eruptions and much slipping and sliding on a slurry of ‘rat dung’ – how the three didn’t get hurt is beyond me. I would have hated being the stage manager in charge of risk assessment.

The whole panto was enhanced by an ensemble of ratlings, villagers alongside superb choreography by Lucy Robson, performed artistically and so wonderfully by the young ensemble.

Speaking to the cast after the show I was astounded to find the very youthful ages of them. With the exception of four or five adults this was predominately a youth led production with the very talented Molly Featherstone and co-writer Harvey Johnson being only 16 years old.

A perfect end to the year alongside Youth Adviser Michelle Coulson – the future of theatre is assured with talent like this throughout the North being nurtured by the adults of STAMP.

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