Dick Whittington

As we settled in our seats the audience were excited and we were looking forward to the show.  When the curtain opened, I was impressed by the scenery and the opening scene showed promise for a fun show.  The costumes were lovely and the company were smiling and performing well.  It was a simple song, Oranges and Lemons, but the cast were giving it the full-on treatment which was a pleasure to watch.

It was when we got to the scene changes that I realised there might be some issues with the performance.  This is a very small venue with very limited backstage space, the scene changes all took a while and were quite intrusive for the performers trying to work in front of the gauze.  Even after the gauze came out, there were still stagehands trying to set the scenery which was such a pity.

I understand that there were quite a lot of problems getting into the theatre and that a full, dress, rehearsal had not been possible.  That is always going to affect the cast and it is no wonder that many of them seemed a bit tentative in their performances.  For this reason, I am not going to single anyone out for comment.

I was extremely concerned for the cast who were having to work with what was clearly a huge set with a lot of pieces and trucks.  As the show went on, it became clear that there was just too much scenery and the pace got slower.  In this type of studio theatre, the rule should always be ‘keep it simple’.  I would say that about 75% of the scenery could have easily been dispensed with, speeding up the pace of the show and making life easier for everyone.  It may also have avoided the problem with the flat nearly toppling onto the children on stage.  Whilst that was an unfortunate accident, I am not surprised that it happened, with so much going on back stage.

I have mentioned, before, that Merlin’s pantomimes are sometimes too long and this was the case with this one too (over two and a half hours with the interval). Each half should, preferably, be around 40 minutes, to make sure that the children in the audience stay interested.  As it was, 3 mums and 6 or 7 children walked out before the finale and that is never pleasant for the cast, especially in this venue where the people leaving had to walk along the front of the stage area.

There seemed to be some very odd choices in the songs. Apart from Life’s a Happy Song, I didn’t feel any of the others were ‘singalong’ material and, surely, that is what panto songs should be.  The small group of musicians accompanied well and produced a good, balanced, sound to support the singing.

The costumes were, in the main, lovely, although I thought it was a shame that only Dick and Alice had different finale costumes.   There was plenty of time for almost everyone to change for the finale and this would have made a more interesting finish to the show.  The choreography was simple but effective so, well done to Steph Basset on her first foray into choreographing a show.

I do hope that the producers give more thought, in future years, to a much simpler set, giving the cast the opportunity to perform without worrying what might be going on behind them.  I would also strongly recommend cutting the length of the show for next year.  It is such a shame that all the hard work spent on rehearsals resulted in a show that was, probably, quite traumatic for many of the cast.

Merlin have produced some good panto’s in the past but this was, unfortunately, not one of their best.

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