Snow White and The Seven Witches

This was, according to the programme, BATS first ever home written Panto and comes from the pen of their Musical Director, Tim Gardiner. Directed by Kay Young, what a brilliant script it turned out to be with, not only some great panto gags but some great and highly amusing musical ones too!

To start off with we had witches rather than dwarfs, Why? Well because, …well, witches are funnier than dwarfs! Allegedly? Apart from Snow White’s rescuers being a Coven the plot did more or less follow the traditional story of Snow White’s troubles with her wicked stepmother, a forest and an apple with all the traditional pantomime ingredients and double entendres. With some excellent twists and turns the pace fairly zipped along and there were some pure side splitting moments we weren’t expecting.

The set designed by Maxine Connolly and built by Catherine Goodman, Russ Jones assisted by the cast and crew was some well-chosen hired backcloths, and using a series of multisided trucks gave us a sumptuous Castle Throne Room, The Queen’s dressing room, a Dungeon and best of all a very well decorated, fabulous looking, witches cottage. Add in a magic mirror and the set was complete. All very impressive and perfect for the scenes depicted and very well stage managed by Spice New-Szarvas. Scene changes in particular were very slickly and quickly done and when major changes were required they were covered by the action taking place in front of the splendid velvet red tabs on what is a huge stage at Biggleswade Academy.

Technical management was in the very capable hands of Dave and Kate Maltby. Lighting was faultless and the sound cues were spot on for timing, and they needed to be as a lot of the jokes depended on them. Nice job guys!

The fantastic array of colourful costumes were sourced by Sarah Vahmyanina, Kay Young and Gareth Griffith-Powell.  All very appropriate to our panto characters. Headgear was particularly impressively ‘over the top’ for the Dame, especially the final one worn which was decorated in blue and white concentric circles, reminding one of Evil Eyes! And they must have cornered the market in Witches hats!   

This was a very large cast of nineteen principals and a chorus approaching twenty, so my hat off to Sarah Vahmyanina, Kay Young and Kerry Hewish for a very well drilled cast in the choreographed numbers. Clearly a lot of hard work had gone into getting them to that level.

A special mention to MD Tim Gardiner as the harmonies in this show were particularly good, and a considerable amount of time had obviously gone into getting them to this level. I’m told they spent three weeks on ‘Find Me Someone To Love,’ alone! It certainly paid off! Great job!

The show was compared at floor level by our two ‘clowns,’ ‘Mop Head’ and ‘Mop Bucket’ played by Kara-Jane Morrallee and Flo Adryanski, who, dressed in colourful bowler hats, spent a lot of their time arguing and fighting amongst themselves to our great amusement. However, they did somehow get the local NODA rep to mop the floor for them after the cast had soaked the front rows of the audience with water pistols. And I mean, soaked!!

Our star and principal girl, Snow White was played by Katrina Harrington, a lady with a voice to die for. And Prince Dickie (Yes, there were lots of smutty jokes on that name!) was thigh slapping played by Louise Connolly. Nurse Nelly Nicholas, our Dame, played by Gareth Griffiths- Powell, commanded the stage splendidly.

Our chief baddy, Queen Gramilla, positively dripping evil and selling dodgy apples was played by Hannah Ridley, who had gone from last year’s Principal boy to take on what is always the best part in any pantomime.  

But the standout performance was Ollie Elkin as the Dame’s son, our Buttons character, Nick Nicholas. The highlight moment of the show has to be him with his floating head through the curtain every few seconds and miming to a few lines of various pop songs. Absolutely genius of an idea and brilliantly executed.

Tom Newman as the magic mirror was also a bit of a star, dressed in silver with matching makeup, his delivery was very comical, and it turns out he has rather a superb voice as demonstrated when he burst through the mirror and sang ‘Freedom.’

Our pair of dim-witted fools, Bodgit and Scarper were neatly played by two brothers, Jack and Toby Gardiner. Russell Jones played the wonderfully named ‘Fishy Rishi,’ a baddy who is amusingly listed in the programme as having recently lost his job. Obviously I’m no idea who that can be..? And set designer, Maxine Connolly had the lovely cameo role of Maude Tinkleman.  No idea who she was impersonating, but she had black hair with a fringe over her eyes and was dressed in a black cape and was on about some Traitors..?? Hmm?  Fabulous stuff and much appreciated by the audience

And then we come to the seven Witches, So, we had Kerry Hewish as Itchy Witch, Jessie Fox as Sweaty Witch, Deborah Taylor as Emoshy Witch, Lorraine Durrant as Forgetty Witch, Deborah Humphreys as Psycho Witch (You definitely didn’t want to cross her!), Natasha Leftwich as Windy Witch (always stay upwind of her) and Joe Moloney as Hairy Witch. Extremely funny performances all round even if the humour did descend to lavatorial level! But they are funnier than dwarfs - LOL!

Jonny Peace was chased around the stage as the ghost whilst we all shouted the traditional ‘behind you.’ And we had a lovely chorus of young princesses in, Lucy Taylor, Anna Carr, Rachel Smith, Skye Wray, Lacie-Marie Peters and Lillie Bathers. All backed up by a Chorus of twenty-one (including some the young princesses and some of the minor principles.)

So, congratulations to Tim Gardiner on an excellent script and musical input. Home written ones such as this are very often so much better than commercially available ones, because the writer knows what resources he or she has to play with, and this is a perfect example. And well done to Director Kay Young, her cast and crew for an excellent evening’s entertainment.

And a special thank you to Spice New-Szarvas for the fascinating backstage tour after the show. The wings were much smaller than I had imagined, the props room was a revelation and Dame corner was amazing and rest of the rooms a real rabbit warren to negotiate. Quite a highlight, much appreciated! Thank you!

 

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