‘It’s Behind You’ is the latest collaboration between The Booth Centre and The Edge Art Centre in Chorlton. The Booth Centre works with people who are homeless or have been in the past, offering them assistance and helping them develop creative skills. The goal being to provide a voice in the arts for this most marginalised of groups.
Written and directed by Jannine Waters, this show is a mash up of every other pantomime, offering the audience a glimpse of what happens after the happy ending. The characters are drawn from previous stories, and we find them at something of a loose end at the start of the play. They’re all not quite sure where they are or what they should do, arguing among themselves about who’s in the right panto and who isn’t.
When the evil Baron Von Greed kidnaps Sleeping Beauty (the only princess who didn’t complete her ninja training, she slept through it) in order to get the plot moving, the assembled characters must band together to mount a rescue attempt. These include The Handsome Prince, who’s still bickering with Cinderella over how long it took him to bring her the glass slipper, two Dames, Dick Whittington and his Cat, a Genie who wants everyone to know how much he doesn’t care, and Buttons, who acts as the master of ceremonies throughout the action. During their quest, they encounter Jack and Jill, now unhappily running a Bed and Breakfast in Blackpool, and find a joke so funny that reading it will likely prove fatal.
The staging is simple, with a stripped back red stage doubling for the many locations visited by the characters, and live music is supplied by a small band and three talented singers. Every single panto character you can think of is included in the large cast of characters. The energetic cast don’t hold back, and this show has some of the best, deliberately hammy, acting I’ve seen this Christmas. The odd fluffed line was instantly picked up on and riffed into new routines.
Like any good pantomime, it doesn’t take itself too seriously, delighting in terrible puns and silly plot twists. However, at the risk of reading too much into it, there certainly seemed to me to be a subtext running through which referenced the past experiences of the performers. The possibility of change is a major theme, such as when the formally villainous Abanazar tries to convince Aladdin that he has genuinely reformed, and that his new-found goodness is not the result of the Genie’s wish. All these familiar characters are in the processing of adjusting to large changes which have occurred in their lives. Having found themselves in new and often better situations, they must now learn what their lives are like on a daily basis, without slipping back into their old lives. As Cinderella has to constantly remind The Prince, ‘don’t lose the plot’. Like the title says, it’s behind you.
Reviewer - Richard Gorick
on - 13/12/18
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