The first, (and one of only a handful), pantomime to open to a live theatre audience this year, was St.Helens's Theatre Royal / Regal Entertainment's production of 'Beauty And The Beast'. As well as social distanced seating and covid secure one-way systems throughout the theatre, the stage had also been fitted with hand sanitising stations and the dancers all wore clear perspex face coverings.
In fact, one of the advantages of a pantomime, is that a real virtue can be made of all the COVID regulations and paraphenalia associated with our current way of living; and no opportunity was missed with this lively show. They made the Buttons-style character, in this production called French Frank (Scott Gallagher) their COVID safety officer, and much humour was gained from this. In fact some of the most funny and certainly the cleverest lyrics came from adapting and adopting to the coronavirus-age. The first act's 'Baby It's Covid Outside' (apologies to Idina Menzel!) was brilliant and very clever; whilst the second act saw another clever Mickey-take, this time Paul McCartney's 'Boris Is Watching Us: Social Distance" as well as the best '12 Days of Christmas' I have ever seen in any pantomime, ever! Here it became 'The 12 Days Of COVID', and as well as finding 12 coronavirus related items to continually go back to, there were two very deliberate, but superbly executed, cock-ups! I'll not spoil it for you any further, but this was just side-splittingly funny and superbly managed.
'Beauty And The Beast' as a story doesn't really lend itself to pantomime in the same way as the purpose-written traditional shows do, and so a Dame, a Fairy, and a Buttons-style character are simply shoe-horned in.
Sadly, much of the traditional pantomime banter between audience and cast had to be done away with, since the restrictions meant that we were not allowed to shout and scream across the auditorium, but the production did try and keep it as traditional as possible and the scary ghost routine for example, a staple of many a panto, was still performed. One thing that did peak my curiosity though was that I seemed to think (perhaps wrongly) that sometimes the cast were miming their songs to prerecorded tracks. And the tap routine to end Act 1 was surely also "mimed" too. I wondered if this was also another restriction that they had to abide by, or maybe I was mistaken.
Directed by Chantelle Nolan, the pace was swift and the story easy to follow; although the second act was much better / funnier / slicker / more entertaining than the first; and this was obvious as the reactions from the youngsters around me perked immeasurably for the second half. One thing did concern me though, and that was that there was a lot of sexual innuendo, hip gyrating and simualted sex movements on stage this evening. One or two, mildly guised for the grown-ups is always acceptable and adds to the fun, but when these movements are overt, obvious and deliberately placed wanting the children to react to them, then it is no longer a 'family show' and are misplaced, extraneous and should be omitted. The worst offender in this regard was Tim Lucas's Gaston.
The sets. costumes, choreography, singing, and characterisations were all generally of a high standard and the whole was very entertaining. But why did the mic levels have to be so high? The whole show was performed several decibels louder than was necessary, and after a while the noise coming from the stage was hurting my ears. There was no need for such volume, this was not a Rock concert.
However, all that being said, it was the first live theatre show since March, and just being back in a theatre and watching live action on a stage was for me the biggest thrill, and it is a small miracle indeed that it was even allowed to happen, and so this should be celebrated. The cast and crew need to be congratulated for being able to work under and cope with all the restrictions and circumstances surrounding the performance, and for bringing about a show of such quality in spite of all.
Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 14/12/20
No comments:
Post a Comment