REVIEW: Snow White by Anton Benson Productions (Online)

Pantomime has always been a local event with families supporting their local venue each year with familiar actors returning and playing different characters “this year”. The Pandemic has temporarily changed this relationship with audiences, and it is fascinating to see how producers brave enough to put their shows online in streamed shows have adapted to the new environment. It also means it is more competitive and audiences at home can select from a range of shows and compare them without travelling. Anton Benson is an experienced producer and following his Christmas production of Once upon a Pantomime with a host of star names crammed into the show, he has returned at Easter with a simpler live stream of Snow White captured on the stage and largely directed as if the audience is present in the auditorium. The result at times with inconsistent sound and poorly illuminated areas of the stage feels a bit like watching a technical rehearsal where the hard-working cast miss the ability to feed off the audience reaction. The added audience applause and cheers sound effect simply emphasise what is missing.

Basil Brush as the Henchman is the standout star of the show, benefiting from close-ups not possible in a live show which sometimes leave the large box from which he appears out of shot. His amiable personality and silly puns were developed on TV and easily translate into the streamed medium in a way not possible when he is wheeled on and off in a live show. The tongue twister recipe sketch is neatly and effectively done.

REVIEW: Alice in Wonderland at the Motherwell Theatre (Online)

Motherwell Theatre, in association with Starbright Entertainments, regularly produce an Easter pantomime so this year they are forced to deliver their latest one in a streamed version into our homes. This has the huge advantage of making it available to a much wider audience rather than just their local Scottish one. The result is a fresh slick eighty-minute retelling of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. It is a technically very good-looking show, well-lit and costumed with a high-quality clear video and audio track.

Written and directed by Phil Norton with additional material by local Motherwell Panto legend Ian ‘Sheepie’ Smith who also plays the White Rabbit it is a combination of straightforward storytelling of the classic story combined with some very familiar pantomime routines and a sprinkling of magic. In the absence of a live audience, they imagine the responses from the virtual audience while addressing them straight down the camera. Sheepie’s comic face and energy engage the remote audience well and you almost believe he can hear the responses!

REVIEW: Jack and the Beanstalk at the Theatre Royal St Helens (Online)

Jane Joseph and Chantelle Nolan, the mother and daughter team who run the Theatre Royal St Helens set the tone in their charming preshow chat reflecting on the Christmas Pantomime which was cut six shows short by the Lockdown. You sense the pride they take in their venue and the productions. We are told that the sets and costumes are all new and they look very good in the bright colours in the tradition of pantomime. Indeed, it is the combined creative talent behind this show that makes it a polished and enjoyable ninety minutes.

Directed by Chantelle Nolan herself with a script by the comic lead Simple Simon, Reece Sibbald, they tell the traditional story of Jack and the Beanstalk with a good balance of well-executed comedy routines and a great music selection. The Music Supervisor is Callum Clarke, and the choices allow some excellent dance routines by Choreographer Nazene Langfield with the leads and a chorus of four girls and two boys. As a result, the well-paced show has many highlights.

Pantomime Round-Up 2020

Usually around this time the vast majority of the three hundred or more Pantomimes end their Christmas runs and cast and crew get a well-earned rest after an intensive fifty-plus show season to packed houses all around the UK. Families will have celebrated together the festive fun and excitement of theatre and young children will have had the first experience of a live show. What is more, the regional theatres will have earned enough income to sustain the venue throughout the year ahead until the next Christmas. 

The Pandemic has changed that for the 2020/21 season with around 200 cancelled or postponed early in the year until 2021 before they even began rehearsals and worse still only a couple opening and completing the scheduled runs. Those Producers who took the chance to go ahead and rehearse, market, and open a show were stopped in their tracks by Tier 3 and 4 closures or worse the need to self-isolate cast members due to illnesses. Many of those affected by closure either planned or rushed to capture their shows so that they could be streamed into our homes. Cinemas do provide a great outlet for captured Theatre, but they too were largely closed so the only way to view was on the home PC / Smart TV. According to the British Theatre Guide some eighty shows were available to view.

Curiously the usually most prolific producer QDOS with 35 shows in a normal season resisted the temptation to stream any archived shows or to capture any of the ten shows that the National Heritage helped to fund to "save Christmas" so many of the biggest Pantomime stars were not to be seen. They did manage to open Pantoland at the Palladium, Sleeping Beauty at the Mayflower in Southampton, and Robinson Crusoe in Plymouth but the first closed soon after opening when London went into tier 3, Southampton closed due to cast illness and Plymouth nearly completed its run until it fell foul of another move into tier 3 regulations. 

REVIEW: Jack and the Beanstalk at the Lichfield Garrick Theatre (Online)

Paul Hendy and Evolution have created bite-size pantos for streaming amongst the eighty offered during December by companies all around the country. They offer a taste of what Pantomime is all about and bring a little bit of festive joy into our homes. However they have shortcut the process by using identical scripts and music for the shows and having seen the Sheffield version, Damian saves Panto and the Canterbury version, Nurse Nellie saves Panto we hoped that the Lichfield Garrick version, Jack and the Beanstalk would offer something different. While the wrap-around theme is varied slightly for Jack and Beanstalk, the basic show is identical save for a few tweaks, I assume from the cast. It is also the most expensive of the three to buy.

The Garrick show is topped and tailed with sponsors messages and a request for donations to support the venue and this at least justifies creating three separate shows from a single production. It is well captured on the stage of the theatre with I think a pre-recorded music track but some good looking Beanstalk sets and gives an outing to the ten-foot Giant Pandemic when they climb the Beanstalk. 

REVIEW: Once Upon a Pantomime by Anton Benson Productions (Online)

Anton Benson Production usually stages half a dozen shows each Christmas and as they were cancelled took the bold decision to record an online version at Rhyl Pavilion incorporating many of the usual headliners for their shows. The challenge was then two-fold; firstly, how to incorporate multiple comics, villains, fairies and heroines into one show and secondly how to capture the show for streaming online securely. The solution to the first challenge was that Anton Benson and the two directors/scriptwriters, Ryan Greaves and Katie Salmon created a mash-up of Cinderella, Snow White, Jack and the Beanstalk and Aladdin where the evil Karona stops the key scene in each before love can succeed. It's a clever idea and means some twenty performers get to play a lead role! The resulting stream suggested that technicalities behind capturing a stage show for streaming proved more difficult to overcome. 

As well as directing, Katie Salmon plays Fairy Tale, a linking character between each scene and Ryan Greaves plays the multiple characters of Wally, Wishee Washy and Buttons with plenty of enthusiasm and energy. They are surrounded by a host of well-known faces from TV and Pantomime, many in very short walk on or video appearances. Veteran Children's entertainer Dave Benson Philips plays the Genie and the King with his usual larger than life over the top style and sings "Look at me" from Sister Act. Barney Harwood plays the Princes and opens Act 2 with "let me entertain you". TV talent show stars Gareth Gates (the mirror in the wall), Bobby Crush, Opportunity knocks winner, (Vomitilda, an ugly sister), Sam Bailey, a GB Pantomime winner in 2019 (Fairy Godmother), Xfactor contestant Lauren Platt (Jasmine) and BGT's Ashleigh Butler and Sully (Aurora) all make appearances. TV quiz show chasers Anne Heggerty (Salmonella) and Mark Labbett (Fleshcreep) also get walk-on roles. Gemma Bissix, TV soap actress plays Morgana and Graham Cole, best known for the Bill, plays Abanazar. 

REVIEW: Jack and the Beanstalk at the Belgrade, Coventry (Online)

The challenge this year is how to pick which of the eighty online Pantomimes to purchase and watch as there are a wide range of titles and approaches to the new medium. One way is to go to the biggest producers of a normal year and select their offering and you can't go far wrong with Imagine Theatre who usually produce 14 shows each season. Their version of Jack and the Beanstalk sticks to the traditional storyline but innovates and plays with the medium to brilliant effect. 

It starts in an empty venue where two veterans of Imagine shows sit on the edge of a bare stage staring into the deserted auditorium and sadly discussing the absence of live shows. Craig Hollingsworth suggests doing an online stream to a bemused Iain Lauchlan. But as a writer, director and Performer, Lauchlan rises to the challenges to deliver a very clever up to date script and plays multiple roles. He plays the Fairy Fluff, Giant Blunderbus and Dame Trot, all in very good costumes and changing with some whizzy editing! Hollingsworth also has multi roles as King Cuthbert, Fleshcreep, and Simon Trott which means effectively one of the two is on stage most of the time to drive the storytelling along at a good pace. 

REVIEW: Nurse Nellie saves Panto at the Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury (Online)

Paul Hendy's Evolution produces some very good shows and the Marlowe in Canterbury is home for one of his productions. It won Best Pantomime (750-1500 seats) in 2017 and its regular Dame, Ben Roddy, won Best Dame in 2018. Also his Musical Director, James Harrison won best musical supervision in the 2020 Awards. As the usual Pantomimes were cancelled, Evolution created a short-form show which is available in an online stream for both the Marlowe and the Sheffield venues. Hendy has written the script and directs the shows and uses the same basic script for both venues, although thanks to Walker Construction, the Marlowe show is available for free. It distils the essence of Panto into a high energy, high-quality capture from the stage of the venue with a limited audience of employees to provide some reaction.

Nurse Nellie runs the Panto Emporium from which Professor Von BadApple (Ian Kirby) plans to steal the props and the essence of Panto. Can the Dame with the help of her son Billy (Lloyd Hollett) and heroine Jill (Cara Hodgson) stop him with the help of the Fairy, Clarice Alexander Burnett? This thin plotline provides the connection between a series of clever new jokes and classic old gags which are brilliantly delivered by the cast. They know how to point the joke, repeating the setup line before delivering the punchline, to maximise the effect. The show has plenty of Covid jokes, those that "take two weeks to see if you get it" and mocks the shortage of toilets rolls by making them the item the audience must watch to stop it being stolen. It also pokes fun at the awful Government Advert for non-essential jobs, such as actors, retraining by referencing Fatima. ( NB. Like the script itself this review is an edited version of the Sheffield review!).

REVIEW: Cinderella at the Turbine Theatre

Pantomime at this time of year is usually a family affair but there has always existed an adult version which targets a narrower audience in which there are no boundaries. Jim Davison toured often with Sinderella and Boobs in the Wood and versions are still available online but this version from Paul Taylor Mills at the Turbine Theatre definitely does not start from the same outlook as those nineties shows. Instead his Cinderella is a 2020 socially distanced romp that soon lives up to its billing of "not for the faint-hearted". It is definitely for an 18 plus audience and you soon lose count of the use of the "F-word"s, repeated often for cheap laughs from the Battersea audience. 

The pedigree of the show bodes well. Taylor-Mills has had some creative success since he opened the tiny Turbine Theatre next to the redeveloping Battersea Power station. Jodie Prenger who co-wrote the show with Neil Hurst, found fame on the TV Talent show "I'd do anything" and has established herself as a Leading Lady in Oliver!, Annie, Spamalot and most recently in a revival of A Taste of Honey. Director Lizzie Connolly met her star of this show, Rufus Hound who plays Buttons in the West End production of Dirty Rotten Scoundrel. The cast is restricted by the rule of six so alongside Hound are a hard-working talent cast of five.

REVIEW: Dick Whittington at the National Theatre (Online)

There are now eighty Pantomimes available online according to the British Theatre Guide website competing for our viewing time at home and targeting the three million ticket buyers who usually see a live pantomime each Christmas. Many charge a fee to watch or request a donation and those funds are so important to these venues for their survival until next year's Pantomime. With the cancellation of so many Pantomimes this year the National Theatre decided to put on its own version which, when London went into Tier 3/4 Lockdown, was forced to close and a captured preview is now available free of charge for a short period. It is prefaced with an appeal to donate or buy tickets in 2021 for the other affected venues but should the significant resources on display at the NT compete against the multitude of online Pantomimes that seek our attention and funds? Indeed should public funds be used at all to create a show competing with them? The answer must be that they need to do something different and raise the bar to justify the competition.

The NT has restaged the Lyric Hammersmith's version of Dick Whittington in the round in a socially distanced way which creates the feel of an expensive circus ring with traps and lights embedded in the floor. It is a modern retelling of the usual rags to riches story with only the occasional double entendre. Indeed in Sheffield venues Damian's PopUp Panto, also available online for a fee, it defines the essence of Pantomime as "pure joy, quirky humour, warm energy, familiarity and nostalgic". The NT version seems devoid of this essence, the characters are overly intense and serious, almost smug and self-satisfied, and the production lacks warmth and was conceived in a London bubble.

REVIEW: PANTOMONIUM! The Pantomime at the Blackpool Grand Theatre (Online)

Martin Dodds, the producer behind UK Productions usually puts on nearly a dozen Pantomimes each year including shows at the very fine Theatre Royal Bath and the magnificent Frank Matcham designed Blackpool Grand Theatre. There is something magical about seeing Pantomime in these wonderful old buildings that resonate of all the past performers who have trod the boards there that make a pilgrimage to see their annual production a joy. This year it had proved impossible with Pantomimes cancelled before they opened and even those that opened like the Palladium, The Mayflower Southampton and the Lighthouse in Poole closing after a few performances due to Covid restrictions or worse illness in the cast. There are currently eighty online pantomimes listed by British Theatre Guide and the challenge is how to adapt this interactive family experience to the small screen. Jon Monie (scriptwriter) and Martin Dodds make a solid attempt in their version Pantomonium filmed on the stage of the Blackpool Grand.

They start by assembling a stellar award-winning small team. Monie won Best Script for his 2019 Beauty and Beast at GB Pantomime Awards, Tom Lister won Best Villain for his Captain Hook and Olivia Birchenough won Best Leading lady in Cinderella at the 2017 awards and Katie Hill won Best choreography at the Blackpool Grand in the 2020 Awards. They add to the team Steve Royle, the madcap comedian who came third in the 2020 Britain’s Got Talent TV show, although as he mocks himself, if Usain Bolt is the fastest man in the world, who knows who is third fastest! To complete the cast is the usual Dame from the Theatre Royal Bath, the delightful gentle Nick Wilton. Together they have the experience to stage and perform Pantomime business.

REVIEW: Cinderella at KidZania (Online)

KidZania is a scaled city replica of real life for children from 4-14 years, designed to empower and inspire, located in West London (W12) which of course was closed when London went into Tier 4 on 16th December. However, they were bold enough to capture a version of Cinderella earlier this year so can offer the kids a glimpse of what they are missing. The production is filmed inside the building using the street scenes as a background for the Village, the ballroom and forest and a traditional stage cloth to set the Hard Up Hall kitchen. It works extremely well giving the show a realistic feel with depth of scene and acting as a promotion for the venue.

Maybe because it is targeted at the same 4 to 14-year-olds with a low attention span in a multimedia world, the show is kept short to just forty-five minutes and they focus on the music rather than the traditional pantomime business and jokes. We only get a handful of the old gags (including a good Weakest Link parody) which are slipped into the storytelling that speeds along until the custard pies provide a weak finish. There ought to be a warning message to the under fourteens "to not try this at home" when Cinderella gets shut in a fridge as opposed to the usual dungeon or cupboard. The call-outs to the audience of course go unanswered which feels flat and they don't acknowledge the silence but pretend there is a response. 

REVIEW: Robinson Crusoe at the Theatre Royal Plymouth

Thanks to the National Lottery, producer Michael Harrison & QDOS and the Sun Saver free tickets scheme it was with some excitement and anticipation we travelled down to Plymouth in Devon to see our first Christmas Pantomime of the reduced season and a rarely seen title of Robinson Crusoe. How appropriate to go in search of Crusoe in a city associated with Alexander Selkirk, the 18th century shipwrecked survivor on whom Daniel Defoe based his famous story and to stand on Plymouth Hoe on a windy December evening before the show gazing out at the ocean. However, that was as close to the original story that we got as this stripped back production borrows the title only to link a series of familiar routines in a music hall style show, but at least it was live theatre and for that we must be thankful.

The Theatre Royal has a wonderful modern spacious 1300 seat auditorium but, on this occasion, the ultra-cautious management can only make available every other row and leave two empty seats between each group in the filled rows. It inevitably mutes the atmosphere. They also dispense with all bar and café sales and programme and merchandising sales therefore taking no ancillary income and are careful to release the audience at the end on a row-by-row basis. There is no interval either in the 80-minute show to avoid queues at the toilets (which are open). It is a very safe feeling environment for the face covered audience.

REVIEW: Sleeping Beauty at the Wyvern Theatre, Swindon

QDOS has built its reputation for Pantomimes with high production values and big budgets with all-star casts and large special FX but they also run several smaller regional venues and stage shows for them at Christmas. The Wyvern Swindon is such a venue with a capacity of 650 and this year they entrusted Chris Jarvis with writing, directing and leading the cast as Happy Harry in an enjoyable retelling of Sleeping Beauty. He keeps the other fairies bestowing their wishes on the baby Rose, seeks to entrap the Prince as the culprit of the fatal spinning wheel and neatly avoids the need to travel forward in time by offering 100 years sleep or kiss of a true love as alternatives, not sequential requirements. The result is a lively entertaining well-balanced show with a strong ensemble feel to the cast of 7 principals, 5 dancers and 3 juveniles with a good mix of comedy business and well-known musical numbers.

Ben Kennedy supervises and arranges the music and with choreographer Lucy Dungate includes well drilled versions of "Burn Baby Burn", "Time Warp", "Walking on Sunshine", "Higher Love", "Can't stop the beat", "Don't stop me now" and "World of your imagination" with a full sound from the band of three, although in some parts of the venue the sound mix muffled the vocals. They are all upbeat recognisable tunes and add to the party atmosphere. The 3 juvenile female dancers are perfectly integrated into the professional dance routines to make a team of eight in the big numbers.

REVIEW: Cinderella at the Hexagon, Reading

Cinderella is the best pantomime title with a delightfully familiar story of good overcoming evil in family conflict and while the writers of the Lyric Hammersmith and Southampton NST felt the need to play with the story, Justin Fletcher sticks to a straight traditional retelling of the tale in his tenth appearance at Hexagon Pantomime. The result is a gently paced Christmas treat for the young families of Reading.

Fletcher, better known to his young audience as Mr Tumbles as well as writing the script stars as Buttons and benefits from director Stephen Boden, the man behind the producers Imagine, and Adrian Edmeades as choreographer ensuring a balanced mix of song, dance and Panto business in a disciplined controlled production with an even pace and good use of all the cast members. Fletcher responds by doing what he does best charmingly and un-aggressively engages the audience in an effortless way.

REVIEW: Peter Pan at the Liverpool Empire

Pantomime is a great British Christmas tradition which brings whole families together but a recent development has helped make it even more accessible for everyone with "relaxed performances" aimed at people with learning or sensory disabilities. These performances reduce sound, lighting and pyrotechnics to lessen sensory overload , edit most frightening scenes and have house lights on to allow people to leave auditorium if they need to. The Empire version of Peter Pan had its relaxed performance on Friday 20th December at 2pm and it was clear from the start that the cast enjoyed it as much as the audience. They all came on to introduce themselves to the audience out of character before the start and to explain that Hook was really a very nice man! 

In any case the emphasis of the production is on a lively fun and daft version of the famous story with much of the traditional story jettisoned. There is no Mr and Mrs Darling in the nursery, no "kiss" given to Wendy, no shooting of the "Wendy bird" as she arrives in Neverland and no marooners rock scene. In addition Tiger Lily becomes Tiger Billy (Asa Elliott) and a new character is introduced with Cut-Lasses Kenneth (Tony Maudsley), the hairdresser addition to the pirate crew direct from Benidorm Live.

REVIEW: Sleeping Beuaty at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford

Some of the best pantomimes are created where the creative team return and seek to build and improve on prior years rather than simply replicate their previous successes in a formulaic way and Guildford’s returning team have once again achieved that.

Jamie Smith (6th Yvonne Arnaud Pantomime) has given this version of Sleeping Beauty a very modern Eco warrior feel with the Prince a video blogger campaigning for less plastic and a greener world and his Princess Aurora a physicist inventing a time travel machine, a modern medieval maiden. It gives the show a fresh feel, although it never really reconciles its setting in thirteenth century with the smart phone live streaming! 

Choreographer Katie Beard (two previous Yvonne Arnaud pantomimes) gets the show of to a great start with "Flash Bang Wallop" with new words to introduce all the characters in the story, the ensemble and juvenile team. Throughout the show there are lively well drilled routines including an excellent fun Dance off and an evil "Poison” under the musical supervision of Anthony England (4th year) and MD Bryan Hodgson (three previous pantomimes).

REVIEW: Aladdin at the South Hill Park Arts Centre

One of the real joys of seeing a wide range of Pantomimes is visiting the smaller venues where the creative teams work real magic with small budgets to delight their local community. One such venue is the Wilde Theatre in South Hill Park near Bracknell. Not resting on their laurels after last year's GB Pantomime Award nominations for best script and set designs, so clearly trumpeted on their handbills and poster, they set out to go even bigger and better this year with Aladdin. Victoria Spearing, last year's winner of Best stage design, has this year gone used her inventive imagination to create a huge set that magical transforms with a minimum of effort from Old Peking with false perspective, to the desert and pyramids of Egypt with an amusing simple flying sequence in between. She makes a virtue of having no flying capacity by using five multi sided trucks all artistically painted with delightful touches to amuse and intrigue. It is a truly magical setting and the Egyptian interior is exquisite. 

Within these settings the strong cast work hard with a well drilled and disciplined young ensemble to bring Joyce Branagh's traditional script to life, although on the adult only nights there are few more near the knuckle ad Libs to amuse the well lubricated members of the audience - hopefully out of ear shot of the younger cast members! Brad Clapson returns as the larger than life, over the top, outrageous Widow Twankey and dominates the stage when he is on. It’s a drag queen performance rather than a Dame but it gets plenty of reaction and laughs.

REVIEW: Sleeping Beauty at the Alban Arena

Sleeping Beauty is an established pantomime title with a strong appeal to a young audience but each writer adopts a different approach to the one hundred year time travel that is central to the story so it was very interesting to see two of this year’s productions on the same day. The Watford Palace version was written by the brilliantly creative Andrew Pollard and the Alban Arena version, just 10 miles up the road by the equally reliable Paul Hendy. There could not be a more contrasting approach to the same story with Princess Aurora falling for a Prince before the evil fairy’s spell sends her into a deep sleep despite her nannie and father’s best efforts to prevent it. But there the similarities end!

At the Alban Arena just up the road from the Watford palace it is completely different approach with the cast of 7 including three comics, six ensemble dancers, three kids’ teams and four musicians and they pack a great deal of business into the two- and half-hour show. Directed by the St Albans regular and favourite Bob Golding in his ninth year and back on stage again as the dame, Nurse Nellie it is very much his show. He knows what works with the audience and what is expected of an Alban Arena pantomime: lots of spurious comedy routines all set in the appropriately named Hamalot.

REVIEW: Sleeping Beauty at the Watford Palace

Sleeping Beauty is an established pantomime title with a strong appeal to a young audience but each writer adopts a different approach to the one hundred year time travel that is central to the story so it was very interesting to see two of this year’s productions on the same day. The Watford Palace version was written by the brilliantly creative Andrew Pollard and the Alban Arena version, just 10 miles up the road by the equally reliable Paul Hendy. There could not be a more contrasting approach to the same story with Princess Aurora falling for a Prince before the evil fairy’s spell sends her into a deep sleep despite her nannie and father’s best efforts to prevent it. But there the similarities end!

At Watford the saviour is Fairy Fender, a lively personable performance from Thomas Fabian Parrish in a seventies wig and jump suit who happens to arrange time travel. We are first taken to 1957 to meet Vince Prince, an excuse for some Elvis Presley songs and impressions before going further back in time to 1539 and Aurora’s birth. By the time her eighteenth birthday arrives in 1557 the Princess, charmingly played by Nikita Johal has met both Prince (assuming he is an actual Prince) and Fender but Pestilentia Blight (as Caraboose is called) played by Arabella Rodrigo still delivers the fatal prick from within a giant 18th Birthday cake. Fender then mistakenly sends her forward 400 years with her father (Lenny VIII played by John Macneill) and her nanny (Fanny played by Richard Emerson) so the Prince can awaken her! The comedy is mainly delivered by Fanny (the Dame) and Leonie Spilsbury as Sowesta, a talking pig.