Little Red Riding Hood

Walking into the small church hall was a great start with a static open set very colourfully painted in Panto style.  The lighting was very colourful and used well to change scenarios and add the drama to the characters. 

The opening scene with the Fairy Godmother, played by Mary Sproxton and the Wolf played by Tom Milton set the scene well with a rhyming prose, atmospherical micing for magical effect.  Fairy godmother was very elegant throughout the show and a lovely characterisation.

The choreography to varied musical numbers was well rehearsed and made good use of the limited space and mainly female chorus but well done to the 3 males.  There was lots of typical panto humour used: slap stick, water sprays, ghost behind, song competition and the argued responses.  The script made good use of topical and local innuendoes with a take-off of Money supermarket advert, Trump, and reference to football teams.  Good rapport made with the audience by several of the actors showed a lovely community spirit present with directly named contacts.

The plot of the panto focused around a very pleasant Red Riding Hood (Emma Lonsdale) falling for Prince Edwin (Laura Waterfield) but encaptured various support characters Bo peep (Beth Coates), Little Boy Blue (Holly Hutton), and  Bobby Shafto (Marty Maenami), all played well, particularly Bobby who had everyone in the audience responding willingly to his request to always shout back when he came on stage, and some lovely adlibs with the Dame. Hustle and Bustle were cast to give the comedy two ‘idiots’ panto performance as the henchmen of Sir Jasper.  Sir Jasper –the panto villain, was well played by Ged Kirkbright, maintained an aloof attitude, evil baddy and a good accent throughout the evening, and got plenty of audience response “boo”s.  

The costumes were excellent, very colourful contrasting from summer fresh bright to nightclub sparkles, and  particularly numerous, varied, and whacky for Malaria Merry, the dame, played unusually by a woman and played so very well by Jill Stephenson, having good energy, chaotic nature, with good panto humour, and a great favourite with the audience.  Her performances in the “Honey G” scene, and the “let’s get physical” fluorescence scene were particularly excellent, and added a modern inset, nicely done.

Tom Milton was excellent with the wolf’s characterisation, he really made the animal come to life with arm gestures, body movements, and facial expressions, accentuated by his face make-up, rhyming script, lighting and stage smoke.  He ad-libbed well on occasions as well, interacting with the audience heckles in a relaxed way. He always made the feeling of danger and drama when he came on the stage. Great performance.

Overall a lovely feel good entertaining evening with only one criticism that the first half was long, however the audience were all still enjoying the show to the end, with rapturous applauses for the curtain call.  Very well done Minstrels. 

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