Sing a Song of Sixpence

Six a Song of Sixpence – A Pantomime

Written by Alison Holly

Performed by Willand Theatrical Society at Willand Village Hall

On Friday 16th February 2024

Directed by Jeannette Simmons and Sam Fincher

Musical Director Alan Gage

 

As the curtains open, we find ourselves transported to Meadow Land where the nursery rhyme characters, we are to meet, live and thrive. This is a well-written creation of Alison Holly, a local writer, who also plays Queen Bee in this production. She is also responsible for costuming the whole production which I will mention later.

There are a number of characters in this production all based on famous nursery rhymes. The scenery is produced by projection, on to a backcloth, of farm buildings and fields of corn growing producing a lovely effect for staging. The company sing “The Sun has got his hat one’ accompanied by Alan Gage the MD on his piano. We meet Bo Peep in purple and white lace outfit with her fluffy sheep under her arm, a strong actor with presence, Mary Mary in a flowing dress of yellow and green and hat to match with a fine devon accent along with lazy Boy Blue in a blue suit, blue wig, lace cravat and shirt, who was perfectly permanently tired. Nice characterization from all three.

Dilly and Dally, two scarecrows whose costumes were beautifully designed, held the stage on every occasion they entered, narrating the story with strong clear diction and sweet, individual personalities. I loved their simple rendition of “Busy doing nothing”. Then we meet our Dame, Pretty Polly, played by an enthusiastic actor who loved interacting with the audience and had some cracking lines such as “You nearly blew my knickers off”, which he relished. In high heels, this actor towered over the rest of the cast in gorgeous outfits such as a yellow and green patched dress with a lovely floppy hat and a stunning red spotted dress with, red wig and blue ribbons. Her children, Silly Sally and Simple Simon each bought a different dimension to the production, Sally being far brighter than her very simple brother, played dopily and naively by this actor. These two worked perfectly together and complimented each other’s’ characters.

Queen Bee was perfectly portrayed by an actor with superb diction and stage presence in a brilliant costume, which she created. A costume, cleverly designed and consisting of a tunic with connected legs which all moved together, a superb headdress with goggles and a crown (well she is a Queen), brown leggings and boots. With smaller versions created for her four bees (who also play the four villagers), this swarm or colony looked incredible. Not only that, these four junior actors were exceptional throughout the production, with individual personalities they acted with confidence, clear diction and really impressed me.

Old Macdonald and Spiller were delightful cameo roles. Spiller with a northern accent (I believe) and Old Macdonald a posh Devonian who falls for Pretty Polly’s charms, poor man!

The royal family of Meadowland consisted of Old King Cole and the Queen of Hearts, with their enthusiastic son, Prince Jasper.  Old King Cole was a perfect stateman-like character alongside his Queen with lovely stage presence and sparkly heels, both experienced performers.  This was Prince Jasper’s first production with WITS but you would never have known as his enjoyment in the role was palpable. His confidence exhibited when he asked for his play-on music!

The role of the baddy is crucial in any pantomime and in this one it was played by not only one but three characters, those blessed crows. Dressed in a handsome, exquisitely created costume of black feather like material and impressive head-dressed, their leader, King Crow, was exceptional in this role. Every line was hilarious and the ability to ad-lib with the audience was remarkable and had the audience roaring with laughter. Her ‘crow-horts’, Blackbeard and Blackhead matched their boss in their comedic timing and were a joy to watch. I really believe that you would not see any better on a professional pantomime stage.  Superb performances and all three wonderfully costumed.

With everyone pairing off at the end this panto had its happy ending with the crows being baked in an incredibly huge pie, a superbly created prop.

The staging was simple but very effective with nice touches such as the barn cloth brought in with a doorway cut-out showing the projection of the field beyond and the placing of the huge pie in the finale.

It was lit well, with lovely oranges and yellow for the scarecrow scenes and fields of corn. The sound was perfect with the use of individual mics, which can be problematic if the script is not closely followed by the sound engineer. In this case there were no issues at all. Well done.

The costumes were created and produced by Alison Harries (Queen Bee) and were fantastic. Dilly and Dally were dressed in either a colourful dress (skirt and top) or trousers with clever touches of red/purple and yellow wigs under straw protruding hats, with straw bracelets and fluffy grey boots again with straw coming out. The Crows costumes, all three sewn and created individually, mimicking shiny black feathers and wings of a crow, headdresses with large crow beaks and feathered or crowned headdress. The beautiful bee costumes… the list goes on. The attention to details of every character costumed was outstanding and immense praise should go to Alison. Not only that, she wrote this pantomime too. A very funny story with excellent use of nursery rhyme characters within the plot.

My congratulations to everyone involved in this production which was thoroughly enjoyed by every member of the audience and once again a triumph for the cast, crew, production team and front of house.

Enormous thanks to Mike and the front of house team who always make my husband and I feel like we are part of the WITS family.

Lyn Burgoyne

Noda South West Representative (District 5, Mid and East Devon)

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