Princess Chloe and The Monster

It is not every day that a director gets the chance to direct a brand-new piece which they have written, well step-up Kimberley Longbottom who not only directed Princess Chloe and The Monster for Crigglestone Community Theatre Company, she had also written it.

As with most pantomimes the first scene sets the stage for the following scenes and introduces all the main characters who were Abigail Welburn as Princess Chloe, the title character who was perfect, she came over as an extremely sweet, innocent young girl, well that is until she sets out on her mission.

Abigail has a lovely voice which was perfect for the songs chosen for this piece.

Pri8ncess Chloe has a mother, The Queen played tom perfection by Robert Gordon who was doing his very first stint at playing a Dame and I have to say he made a good effort, entering each time with a different costume, more outrageous than the one before.

As with all traditional pantos we had a “Silly Billy” character, or in this case Toggles, who was the best friend of Princess Chloe, Holly Greco was perfect in this role, she was lively, energetic and had the audience in her grasp as she started on her journey through panto land. Holly got the audience immediately on her side by asking them to be in her gang which worked extremely well, they loved her.

Another tradition of all good pantos is of course the goodie and baddie, here we had Fiona Welburn as The Fairy who entertained the audience with her rhyming lines, which is until The Witch entered the stage under the wing of Nicola Duval who had just the right amount of badness to make her believable. Both Fiona and Nicola entertained the audience to the full with their banter.

The plan of the story is to find Princess Chloe a suitor, however she is not going to be happy with any old guy who happens to please her mum, so she decides to disguise herself as one of the suiters.

The three suiters who are trying to win the hand of Chloe are Sir Glad To-Be-Here, Sir Run-a-Lot, Sir Pessimist and Sir Bore-Off who were played expertly by Richard Longbottom, Graeme Hemmingway, Paul Biltcliffe and Niamh Biltcliffe, respectively.

Initially they were a little wary of this new suiter who was actually Princess Chloe disguised but soon they accept her into their little gang.

In their quest to win the hand of Princess Chloe they had to battle with The Monster who of course is in the evil clutches of The Witch, however when they actually find it, they realise it is nothing more than a fluffy little animal.

This was a great panto with some good storylines and songs, however if I have to make one criticism it would be the numbers were a little too long, they were all sung and danced really well but a little cutting would, I think, have made the whole story easier to follow.

The final product was a superb panto with some really good panto characters who were able to work together much to the enjoyment of the audience, especially the younger ones who loved it.

Congratulations to Kimberley on her first venture at writing a panto and also to the cast who pulled it off with ease, not an easy job when you have nothing to compare your character to.

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