Trouble in pantoland

I thought I knew this Panto as I had reviewed a show with the same title in November last year, I quickly found this was an entirely different show. The show opened with the appearance of the Wizard, whom the audience soon learned, after initial encouragement, had to be booed loudly at each appearance. This was a confident performance by Phil Melia as the archetypal baddie, a massive blonde moustache and dark makeup creating the look, following this we were introduced to three witches, very reminiscent of the opening of Macbeth. Three good performances, Sarah Melia as The Crone, Chloe Gilbert as The Maiden and Carrie Parsons as The Mother, very entertaining, good clear diction, well made up and appropriately costumed for the different ages portrayed, Chloe giving us a nicely performed lovestruck maiden.

There were many principals in this show and they gave us some good performances, two perfect castings were Amy Cahill as the Wicked Queen and Kiran Parsons as Number One. These were strong performances throughout and they worked well together, Amy as the imperious Queen and Kiran as the subservient aide de camp. There was plenty of love interest in the story line with many Panto Princesses and their suitors, the Princesses bemoaning the fact that they couldn’t find their Princes as they were turned to stone by the wizard. Hannah Strathern and Cassandra Fisher as Cinderella and Prince Charming, Alex Parsons and Scarlet Procter as Snow White and Prince Gwain, Dani Swanson and Louise Cywinski as Sleeping Beauty and Prince Wilhelm, there were some nice partnerships here and the Princesses had more entertaining dialogue. The greater love story was nearly a love triangle, that of Jo Ward as Prince Robert and Jayne-Marie Hopper as Amelia Sweetheart. Jo was initially a frog prince cleverly represented by a handheld ‘puppet’, the transformation from Puppet to Prince once kissed by the Queen needed a bit more practice. The third side of this triangle was the love-struck Harrison Southgate as Bert Butterfingers madly in love with Amelia. These two worked off each other despite Amelia being oblivious to Bert, Amelia and Prince Robert made a good pairing and both gave us good songs. Harrison was paired with Dominic Bunten as Widow Twanky and this gave us a lot of the slapstick in the show, Dominic had a great array of costumes and wigs and held the audience with him throughout.

There were a few minor characters together with an ensemble of Panto characters, an entertaining Edward Bye in a silver Zentai costume (body stocking) as the Mirror and also as a rather flamboyantly gay Captain of the Guards, Isaac Mynott as Harry the Potter, Jack Learoyd as both Jack and Jack’s Mum (walked well in heels), Bryony Hewitt as the Huntsman, Katie Emmett and Eleanor Vaughan as Guards and Willow Everitt as Aladdin.

This was an entertaining story line incorporating many Pantomime Characters and drawing in references to other shows, Shakespeare and magic re-interpreted from Harry Potter. To the two of us the show lacked pace, some of Bert’s scenes were rather slow. Slapstick needs to be fast paced and the blackouts for the scene changes felt rather long, interestingly the cast often emptied the stage and then there was a blackout leaving an empty stage rather than the other way round. I appreciate that this is Matthews directorial debut and there was much that outweighed the pace. The Production Team had chosen some great songs which were well performed and there was good incidental music. The choreography was good and well performed, nice timing, we loved the tap-dancing Ghosts, clever use of the Gauze to have a whole stage appear although a shame the lights went down while they were still tapping away. Apart from that there was a good lighting plot, the Gauze was used several times to good effect. The back cloths were effective although the set showing the Shop and tearoom let this down, there was a good selection of props, I liked the Mirror cutout ‘gone to lunch’. All Costumes were good and there was good makeup, overall, the important thing was that the audience enjoyed the show so the production team and first-time director Matthew should be happy with this show.

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