Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

After a delightful drive through the Yorkshire Dales it was a delight to be able to finally catch up with Hawes Amateur Operatic Society for their annual pantomime.

The Market Hall is a great venue and the room was buzzing and packed as the local community prepared for the 1st pantomime since 2018. At the helm this year was Amy Cockett for their production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs – a new pantomime for myself and the society.

Straight from the off you could feel this show was going to be a very creative concept – the traditional Prologue wonderfully told in the form of a Puppet show with the Junior members and narrated by the splendid Alison Wade as the “Story-Teller”.  

Alison was a joy in this role, having great rapport with the audience, often whipping up the crowd, and the start of the show saw her lead us into Comedy Tonight from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum – a great choice to set the tone for this show as we got to meet all the main characters in the story.

Before I praise the cast I must give a huge shout out to the team behind the scenes; the costumes were a delight with every member of the cast having multiple changes, the scenery worked perfectly on the stage size available with clever designs for the wishing well, good use of backcloths and an excellent idea for the spooky woodland scene – I loved the juniors as the trees! Finishing this all off was fantastic lighting and sounds effects, masterfully designed and put into action by Tony Wilcock, Colin Bailey and Fred Norman.

The title role saw Shannon McIntyre take on the iconic role of Snow White – not only did she look the part but acted this role with ease, giving us a innocent naivety, she cleverly handled all the chaos around her and gained the audiences empathy and eventual joy with the apple sequence.  There was a lovely connection with the Dwarfs and a believable love story with Prince Rupert played excellently by the simply fabulous Alex Donaldson Coates who strutted and thrusted around this stage a in a truly Royal Aristocratic and arrogant manner. A very funny portrayal of this often brushed over character – well done.

Desperate to rid the world of Snow White was Queen Belladonna, played with great stage presence and a frosty tongue by Katie Iveson, her scowls and terrific bullying of her slightly wimpy husband was lovely to watch and had the audience booing and hissing from start to finish. Being a hen-pecked husband is not an easy task but the role was made to look a pinch of (wonderfully constructed foam filled!) cake by the ever-impressive Dan Cockett. With facial expressions and quick one-liners, Dan excelled in this part and his cheeky innuendos and flirting with Nurse Knick-Knack was an acting master-class.

Nearing an end to the Panto-season for me and I have seen a huge variety of Dames perform and Rob King as Snow White’s nurse matched the best of them, a very modern style with costumes taking us from Kinky Boots to Priscilla the over the top acting sauciness certainly matched the outfits. Rob had a great connection with this local crowd and batted the cheeky remarks back with ease. It was a masterpiece taking on a very modern trend of lip-syncing for the his main song, Donna Summer’s classic Cake in the Rain. Amy Cockett provided the vocals as Rob hammed his way around the rainbow filled stage as the ensemble joined him to close Act 1 with a bang.

Every good Panto needs a comedy duo and in Scratch and Sniff, played by Graham Di Duca and Gillian Anderson, this show had a fab pairing. With her own slightly dim-witted style and grace Gillian was a perfect foil for Scratch. The two of them worked incredibly well together and Graham’s experience on the stage shone through with slightly ropey magic acts, great slap stick and a wonderful audience participation number just a number of scene stealing moments.

Despite its title, the Dwarfs have a very small role to play in this show, so it was great to see how much they were used in chorus work and numerous other mini-cameo roles. Every single Junior member was full of life and energy as the scenes whistled along at a great pace.

The 7 dwarfs all had their own lovely individual personalities. Bossed around by the grumpy and aptly named Grouchy (Cath Eastham) and being chaotically organized by Sergeant (Matt Alderson) they all got their little chance to shine. Millie Spink was a delight as the clumsy Dipstick, Clari Hodgson sneezed her way around the cottage as Snotty, slowly the pace of the script down perfectly was Frankie Iveson as Snoozy whilst Eva Sleightholm (Blushful) and Freya Hulley (Cheery) represented their names with ease. A lovely little group who acted together as perfect little group.

All other minor roles were played well with Emily Pickard giving us a perfect amount of cheek and sarcasm as the rhyming Magic Mirror (a great idea to have the human head peeking out of the effective mirror frame), Val Robinson joking her way from scene to scene in a true comedy style, Andrew Fagg was hilarious as the Butler Garkon as he waltzed in and out of scenes with an upper lip and pointed nose and Amie Pye was a wonderful Chef with a suitably over the top ridiculous French accent.

This show had clearly taken a lot of work and effort and huge praise must go to Amy Cockett who aided by her musical team of Colin Bailey and Mick Yare came up with great musical numbers to accompany the story. There were some very modern and original concepts to the "traditional" pantomime and they worked really well, scene changes flowed and the Pantomime had a lovely community fun feel throughout - well done Amy and team.

If this show had been 4 years in the making then it was definitely worth the wait, I had a wonderful evening and hope it’s not another 4 before I can return again. Thank you to everyone involved

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