Snow White

This was our first visit from NODA. Welcome to the NODA family. We were greeted by what appeared to be a happy party. This continued all evening, sitting round tables, which enabled several performers to find their way through to the stage and share ad lib comments and much laughter.

A lovely mixture of ages on stage, a real sense of team spirit. All of the cast held their own character very well. We saw the red team of 8 dwarves, who also had their own character to immerse themselves in. They had their own colour too. 

I especially enjoyed Dopey (Connie Wintle) and Grumpy (Bethan Williams). As with most pantos there are opportunities to change the portrayal of the story. This Snow White had all of the traditional plus lots of fun – mirror mirror, poison apple, dwarves, good fairy queen, evil queen, prince, dame. Fairy Felicity (Sally Davies) opened the show speaking in rhyme – nice clear speech and nice singing voice.

The first to sing to us was Snow white (Anna Parry) - no mistaking her – who wore the traditional dress and black hair. Her singing was beautiful, although the mics were too loud at times. The singing and dancing throughout the show were good. Well done the choreography team (Brittany Lund and Cameron Williams). Cameron was also the director and Nanny Nobalot. What a task – he certainly obviously enjoyed himself. Great short dames dresses and a variety of wigs. He related well to the Evil Queen (Andrew Longford). They came separately through the audience and joked with everyone, along with prompting each other.

Evil Queen talking to the Magic Mirror (Kieran Vernon) and the Hand Mirror (Alba Shurmer). The Mirror was dressed in silver  behind a silver stretchy material – it worked very well, Hand Mirror had clear speech. Evil Queen had her own 2 stooges Poncy (Craig Wilson) and Prancy (Pete Shurmer) to carry out her tasks. Of course Queen had to offer Snow White the poison apple which raised a laugh when she took a good apple first.

Many of the cast were given character name – Bling & Blong the Jewellers, Shiney Hiney and Dusty Crack the cleaners with Rita Rubbs. Our Prince Gethin (Zach Freeman) needed to be read the plot as he had to be guided by  the dwarves about the kiss to wake Snow White.

There is no show without Punch and no panto without Buttons (Holly Batty) who had brilliant voice projection, and the wedding cake making allowed flour fights and more laughter both from the cast and the audience.

This company knows how to entertain. A good night was had by all.

 

The views in this report are solely of the author.

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