The Pied Piper

As we took our seats the buzz was electrifying. This society has a huge following and plays to packed audiences. The audience, excitedly arriving in anticipation of a fine evening of amateur dramatics were not let down in this excellent production of The Pied Piper.
Musical Director Aubrey Sanderson, and his ensemble of some of the best local musicians started off the show with real upbeat music to set the scene, and are to be commended for the wonderful sound they make. Aubrey keeps the music going at a lively pace and with efficient scene changes from Stage Manager, Kevin Knox and crew, the panto moved on at a very lively pace throughout the whole show. The scenery and props were authentic and with excellent sound and lighting, this team working together reflected the hard work this society puts in to ensure an extremely slick production.

The Pied Piper was a brand new pantomime script written by Alan P Frayn and had all the ingredients of a good panto and much up to date humour which the audience loved. Set in the German town of Hamlin the script followed the well-known story and though a little contrived at times as it moved from the town square into the sewers, onto a pig farm, a sausage stuffing factory and finally into the magic mountain, these deviations are what we expect from a good panto. 

In traditional form Good Fairy Strudel (Jennifer Greenwood) got us off to a good start until she was interrupted by the scary Sour Kraut (Denise Clarke) and her gormless assistant Rat Worst (Jonathan Scott). These three characters worked so well together and acting skills were superb. Jonathans solo was excellent and when he dueted with Denise we were in for a treat as it was really upbeat. Burgomeister (Keith Fraser) huffed, puffed and panicked his way through the scenes as he was not a fan of Rat Worst and his rat helpers when they were on stage. The youngsters playing the rats we well drilled and worked hard to stay in character, frightening all the villagers etc. at every opportunity.

Comic duo Splatter (Fiona Dunn) and Blatter (Sharon Young) were the two dishonest ruffians who managed to blunder around achieving no success at in capturing the rampant rats. These two work so well together and were just a laugh a minute. The shows ‘delightful’ dame voluptuous Helga (Murray McKay) was hilarious in her role as pig farmer and she was ably assisted by her son, larger than life Silly Billy (Simon Landels). Simons amazing comic timing and wonderful facial expressions had the audience in fits of laughter at every entrance. He delivered an excellent performance.  Of course in every panto there is boy meets girl and these two roles Hans (Hannah Bass) and Heidi (Georgia Young) were just lovely together and though the story was not woven around them they gave sound performances. Hannah was a shapely and leggy principal boy and Georgia made a demure and pretty Heidi. The Pied Piper ( Geraldine Skelly) gave a confident and assured performance as she took the rats away and later the children.

There were super chorus routines where singing and movement reflected how much they were all enjoying themselves. The senior and junior chorus were most certainly an integral part of this panto. There was standing room only in the ‘Rat and Ferret’ and I loved the way this company when in full swing, singing and dancing in this pub scene took a selfie and published it each night on social media. Such a forward thinking idea!

With stunning costumes and superb make-up this, well delivered panto could not fail to delight audiences.

This is yet another wonderful success for Spittal Variety Group. Well done to production team, crew and performers for giving us yet another night of wonderful traditional panto entertainment.

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