Hansel and Gretel

On a very blustery evening I ventured out to the welcoming Washington Arts Centre to see the annual pantomime by Washington Theatre Group.

As usual the traditional tale of Hansel and Gretel had been tweaked and adapted by the group to fulfil their own needs whilst retaining the traditional elements of Pantomime.

In the title roles of the ‘children’ Hansel and Gretel were two veterans of the group, Peter Wilson and Cath Mills respectively who introduced the assembled audience to the storyline and more importantly the ‘etiquette’ of pantomime, reminding the youngsters when they should cheer and also when to boo and hiss – it must be confusing to a well brought up and polite youngster that it is ok and even encouraged to show distaste for an adult.
There was one small child in the front row that needed no encouragement as they were very vocal to all (often rhetorical) questions posed by Peter and Cath as they engaged answering loudly often to the amusement of the audience.

In the basic but very well thought out and decorated set of a woodland scene the good entity of the forest ‘Willow Wisp’ (Marie Lovell) appeared from under a pile of leaves and twigs to greet the brother and sister Hansel and Gretel, explaining as she did so that there was an evil entity near who was stealing all Willows magical powers of the forest and driving away her woodland creatures. Marie was ideal for the part as she performed the role in a ‘Mother Earth’ demeanour.

Enter the ‘Dame’ – the children’s ‘Nanny’ (Chrispin Welby) with grotesque make up but kind heart. Upon the losing of her job ‘Mother’ (Pamela Elliott) had to make financial saving and let Nanny ‘go’. Pamela played the role in a very caring manner reminiscent of ‘Wendy Darling’ in Peter Pan.

What was the unemployed Nanny to do – obviously ask the forest ‘Alexa like’ search engine ‘Bing Bong’ (played with likeable spirit and very ‘loud’ blue hairstyle by Rachel Neill) – "well retrain as a Tik Tok influencer" to much disconcertion of Nanny.

Any pantomime has to have an evil entity (with and equally evil but slightly ‘dimmer’ sidekick. Enter evil ‘Witch’ Christine Jary who interacted well with the young children threatening to eat them in a stew (apart from the fact that they were too scrawny). Her sidekick ‘Leafwort’ was ably played by Andrew Malloy in a very ‘Uriah Heap’ manner and despite his evilness the audience took to his character because of his ill treatment at the hands of the Witch.
Obviously the Witch had access to the forest internet search engine also although her search engine ‘Ding Dong’(Michael Tetchner) was an earlier and inferior version to Bing Bong – Michael was very slow and laborious as befitted his earlier model.

The children from the Trish ‘n’ Tina School of Dance played woodland characters as well as dancing and the five used provided the ‘Ahhh’ factor.

As is now traditional we were entertained by the ‘speeded up’ chase video insert around a local park by Witch pursuing Hansel and Getel.

Of course good towers over evil and the witch gets her comeuppance and Hansel and Gretel get home safely to their family and the woodland creatures return to the forest and all is well (until next years panto…)
I just hope that ‘Ding Dong’ got his much needed ‘upgrade’…..

© NODA CIO. All rights reserved.