Dick Whittington and his Wonderful Cat

St Michaels ADS Pantomime this year was the story of Dick Whittington and his Wonderful Cat written by Ian D Field and included a number of original songs penned by Richard Lamming of Pantomime Songs Ltd. Directed by the talented June Dowd this was a nice family traditional pantomime with good sound, lighting, effective scenery and bright colourful costumes which all fitted the production and the story well. The cast all worked hard together to bring to life the well known characters from this story that we know and love so much. The cast included Alex Harvey confidently playing the central role of Dick Whittington and Gracie Broad as the lovely bubbly Alice Fitzwarren who both worked together nicely to make a worthy central pantomime couple. June Dowd as Queen Rat had just the right amount of wickedness in her voice for the character and the audience certainly gave her lots of boos when she came on the stage, her opposite number was the good Fairy Bowbelles played very nicely by Cecilie Sarnec. Anthony Concannon produced a good comedic characterisation as Sarah the cook, he had good comic timing which resulted in some good comedy moments, he was well complimented by Ann Wasley as Idle Jack Sarah’s sleepy dopey son, they both worked together well and had a good rapport with the audience. Ian Feld as Alderman Fitzwarren and David Pritchard as Bosun Billy Bowline also worked together well which resulted in an entertaining comedy double act. There were also three promising comedy performances from namely Ben Hurst, Daniel Hurst and Josh Cadman as Raticuss, Ratfink and Ratbert Queen Rat’s evil rat henchmen and another young star in the making has to be Gracie Alexander as Tommy the cat her facial expressions were a delight, she did not have to say anything to express what she was thinking. There was an entertaining cameo performance from Debbie Jones as the Sultana of Morocco with Susan Alexander as Roxanna, Phoebe Ferrimond as Fortuna and Julie Clarke as Beast. The chorus of sailors’ townspeople and courtiers along with the dancers all worked hard to support the principal cast and appeared to be enjoying themselves immensely. Diction and clarity of words was excellent and the plot could be followed easily although the pace was a little slow on occasions usually when words had been forgotten, however there was generally an all round very good rapport with the audience which is very important in the success of any pantomime. Musical director Don Hall played very well and supported the cast excellently, there was some lovely original music in this pantomime especially the love song which was sung by Dick and Alice.

I would like to congratulate everybody involved in this Pantomime thank you for a nice entertaining family Pantomime and thank you for inviting us we hope to see you again for your next production

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