The pantomime season has finally arrived in Bury, and this year's offering from The Big Tiny Theatre Company, is the well-known story of Dick Whittington.
The Met's stage is not large, and the coffers for such a regional venue are not bottomless, and so producers and directors need to be creative in order to still try and create the same glitz and razzmatazz that panto requires without underwhelming our expectant young audience. It's a difficult one, expecially in our post-covid times; but here a cast of just seven performed all the roles between them - well, actually only one of the cast multi-rolled, and a lovely running-gag virtue was made from this; Ian Hayes deserves credit for this, if only for his attempt at channelling Kenneth Williams at one point.. keep that in, it was lovely! - whilst the fantastic costume changes of the Dame just got more elobarate and bizarre as the show went on. His finale costume really did 'crown' them all!
What did let the side down a little perhaps was the lack of chorus dancers. Most pantos these days ask a local dancing school to supply a bevvy of youngsters to become the 'villagers' etc and here this would have worked so well, as it would have filled the stage more when required.
I have to admit that my heart sank completely when the show started. The beginning of the show is pedestrian at best, and completely uninspiring. The songs are not lively, the dialogue uninteresting, and we were all bored... but stay with it... the show does get better, much better in fact. The first act started to come alive on the entrance of the cat, (Leni Murphy), who, despite not being allowed to talk (well, cats don't do they!) she became a favourite of the children right from the start, and her meowing rendition of 'Memory' from her namesake's musical was simply hilarious. The traditional story of Dick Whittington was followed, and yet, although the first half did become much livelier the further into the act we progressed, we were still lacking the panto feel.. there were no time-honoured responses, no traditional routines, no slapstick, nothing that one associates with this genre except a Dame - Sarah The Cook (Robert Styles) and the 'baddie' - here Queen Rat, speaking in rhyme (Nancy Penvose). We had to wait until the second act for the panto to truly kick in, and kick in it did! Once the cast started they couldn't stop, and despite the set falling apart, the lighting cues going wrong, the cast corpsing, and the odd costume malfunction, the show was all the better for it. The cast had upped their collective game, and suddenly we were truly in pantoland. It was opening night this evening and so perhaps the cast need a few more runs of the show yet before it 'beds in' and hopefully the show can then start in the same gear as it finished this evening.
The show includes many silly jokes, and again, these seemed to become more and more as the show went on; and whilst majority were for the children, there were one or two thrown in there for the adults too - just as there should be - panto is for families, and most of them landed this evening.
In order to judge the success of such a show though, one really needs to watch the target audience - and I was constantly doing that this evening. They wanted a panto, they wanted audience interaction, they wanted to shout, cheer and boo, and the more opportunity the cast gave them, the more contended they became, and by the end of the second act, they were all sated, having completely forgotten that the show started so insipidly.
Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 8.12.22
on - 8.12.22
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