The Wizard of Oz Pantomime

Well! Who knew that there was a Wizard of Oz Pantomime, complete with a Dame, a Princess and a Prince, but of course we all know who the baddie is, and the goodies, don’t we, oh yes we do!

I’m still not sure how we had a Princess in Munchkin Land even having read the script for the first scene, also the Prince had been banished to the Emerald City by the Witch of the West. I can see however how Aunt Em became the Pantomime Dame and the rest of the story we all know although we had the addition of the Princess going to rescue her Prince.

There was a remarkable set for Munchkin land, that made a great impression on the stage, some very good backcloths that glided across for walkovers etc. allowing the set to be changed as necessary. The gates to the Emerald City were also quite something, opening up to allow use of the full stage. What I liked and haven’t seen before was that the group has invested in ‘smoke cannons’ (for use of a better word) instead of Pyros, each time the witches of the North, South and West entered the stage there were great billows respectively, of Blue, Pink and Black smoke dropping down from behind the Pros’ arch, very effective. There was also a very effective piece of set for the Wizard and a balloon for the departure from Oz. Another addition was that the Dame had brought a very hungry rabbit in a hutch with her! Don’t ask me why. A nice touch was a yellow brick road that was rolled across the stage.

Where would any Panto be without the Dame and we had a good performance here from Bobby Herman, good make-up, plenty of ad-libbing that worked well and some amazing costumes and wigs. Bobby certainly kept the audience on their toes, nice and loud and over the top as he should be, good with the children invited up onto the stage. The three actors, Charlotte McAllister as a very floppy and agile Scarecrow, Carrie Freeman as an energetic Lion and Andrew Downing as Tin Man portrayed their characters very well,  flexible and fun on stage, good interaction with each other and with Dorothy, nicely played by Elloise Fisher. For all four their dialogue was nice and clear and the many songs were well sung often leading the whole company in song or accompanying dance numbers. I did like the fact that none of these songs were particularly long apart from the big company numbers which were all well sung, from the youngest to the oldest. Not the normal Wizard of Oz songs as they were not in the licence, but the songs that were well chosen went down well.

You cannot do Wizard of Oz without witches and they were well cast, Justine McGarrity was great as the wicked witch of the West, how she kept that voice up I don’t know, she was really booed by the audience, well done. The witch of the North in Blue and the witch of the South in Pink were respectively Nicola Sandall and Anna Love Taylor, two great portrayals of a drippy witch and a sensible witch, both bringing out the comedy of their characters. Jonathan gave us a suitably apologetic Wizard, Millie Jackson as Princess Margarette and Hannah Collins as Prince Emerald brought a little regality to the stage. 14-year-old Ryan Jennings gave a good account of himself as the Chamberlain, good and confident. There were nice cameos from Naomi Crowther, Lola Harris and Jorja Long who was the puppeteer handling Bazil the Rabbit.

It was nice to see the different age groups with their own dance routines, juniors, intermediates and seniors, good routines, some imaginative ideas for the seniors. The choreography was good throughout the whole show and the youngsters sang well, knowing their words and their movements. This was a nicely costumed show well done to the hard-working wardrobe team with quite a few costume changes for the dancers, and great Principal costumes. There was good make up, enhanced by a clever lighting plot and which was well rigged and there were no problems with sound.

The whole production team and those working backstage with the set should be more than happy with all their hard work in this show also a well done to Hannah and the small band for the live music.

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