The Pied Piper of Hamelin

Catworth village hall is one of the smaller venues I visit with a very small stage, practically no wings and changing facilities in the toilets. CATS have been putting on an annual pantomime since 2008, making this their fifteenth.  And all credit to them they do make the most of their limited space with welcoming hospitality, some splendid sets and home written scripts. Stalwart Scott Millington had penned a brand-new version of The Pied Piper of Hamelin stuffed full of some witty jokes that elicited the usual mixture of belly laughs and groans expected of this peculiarly British art form.

And this year they had gone to some pains to improve the sound quality of the auditorium, using newly installed baffles and surround sound, which was seamlessly executed by Clara Chaney. Whatever they did, it worked perfectly, as sound quality was never an issue throughout the show.

This year’s set by Paul Goodyer and Ken Payne was particularly spectacular with an absolutely superb, printed cloth of the town of Hamelin, complete with typically Germanic architectural houses, central monument, floral balustrade, clock tower with archway and a street café.  To stage right was an equally impressive Beer Keller scene also printed on cloth and stage right a home painted mural of ‘Dark Mountain,’ where the Piper took the kidnapped children.

The lighting by Jim Daniel and Mike Brazel in the main lit the stage well, but I wasn’t quite sure why they didn’t use the gantry of lights halfway down the hall as anybody at the front of the stage was slightly cast in shadow?  

Colourful Costumes and various rat outfits were well sourced by Cathy Goodyer, Debra Maddox and Vivien Reffin and this trio were also responsible for props, some of which were scary, such as a giant spider that crept down the outside of Dark Mountain and some were brilliantly comic, such as the miniature clockwork toy dog – masquerading as a fierce wolf – that went across the front of the stage and not to forget the stuffed rats regularly chased across the stage and cudgelled off by rat catcher, Lotte!

Excellent makeup especially for the rats was done by Emma McCreath and was very effective.

Music was provided by the acoustic guitar of Vlad Sljapic, playing Herr Loss and by the clarinet of Lili Sljapic and the wonderful singing voice of Alistair Outram who, along with Lili, supplied the interim music. And of course, we all enthusiastically joined in to the chorus of ‘Oom-Ja-Ja,' clearly plenty of inspiration taken from the musical Oliver!’

The cast all bravely took on Germanic accents for this show, which worked quite well and certainly added to the comedy. Lili Sljapic confidently led this cast as Peter the Pied Piper of Papenburg, (as we all repeated regularly throughout the show) ridding the town of rats and children whilst demonstrating her prowess on the clarinet. Chris Chaney was a very Germanic Burgermeister Von Braun, whilst Liz Murphy was his jolly wife, who on discovering his secret love of cross-dressing in her clothes then took enthusiastically to wearing his! The story was told by Old Socrates played by Nick Grantham, who turned out to be the only rat to survive being drowned when Peter had led all the rats into the river, whilst his ‘flashback’ younger self was played by Paul Goodyer.

Vicky Ivell as Lotte was a very upbeat rat catcher, who could very comedically hold a note for longer than most, whilst Julie Daniel played her friend Giselle as well as Gretchen a market trader.

Our baddies, Rachel McCreath as Hildegard Brumhandle and Alistair Outram as Helmut Schnodrigg were great fun giving property developers a bad name, these two certainly knew how to wind up an audience and Alistair’s song was certainly a highlight. Alistair also played Rat Julius Cheeser.

The two disgruntled market traders, played by Debra Maddex as Heidi and Julie Daniel as Gretchen, were not happy with the proposals of the property developers to do away with the market stalls.

One clever piece of casting was to cast the children as exactly the opposite, being played by older statesmen Ken Payne and Dick Martin as Klaus and Mathilda respectively. Very clever!

Finally we had Pippa Ellison as Frau Torte and Joy Grindle as Rat Damon.

Unfortunately, this was opening night but the only night I could review this show and sadly a few gremlins had yet to be ironed out. There were quite a few prompts and late entrances, leaving actors somewhat stranded, impacting badly on the pace, which could definitely have benefited from being picked up a lot more all round.  No doubt all these would be sorted by the end of run.

Well done Scott Millington, his cast and crew, I look forward to the next home grown panto and I’ll try not to come on the opening night next time. Hope the rest of the run went well.


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