The annual panto season usually revolves around the same handful of regulars; Cinderella, Mother Goose and you can probably name all the others. News Mills Art Theatre has developed a reputation for offering something a bit different and ‘Ali Baba And The Forty Thieves’ certainly is in that category; a well-known story but rarely presented as a panto, written by Alan Frayne who has given his own take on pretty much every panto standard.
The show itself had everything you might expect from a panto with a villain aided by a couple of inept sidekicks, a pantomime dame, the roles of good and bad fairies represented by magical black and white cats, principle boy and girl from humble backgrounds and a king (or sultan, in this case) who is the father to a beautiful princess. The large cast boasted a few interesting additions however; notably Sheherazade, who of course is the main character in the source material from Arabian folk lore.
This was a confident production with all the cast appearing very much at home on the stage. There were a number of effective double acts, notably Charlotte Parry and Lisa Quinn as the Black and White Cats and Stephen Johnson and Kim Cooper as an amusing couple of inept villains. Isaac McElroy was funny in giving a splendidly clichéd impression of a Prince Charming (Haroun) and Samantha Provart provided a suitably romantic Princess Jasmine. Isaac Fletcher Shaw as Ali Baba gave the virtually the only serious performance of the night, but that was no bad thing in view of all the other zany characters. Jazz Lomas was very good as Marjana, Ali Baba’s ultimate love interest, again giving her role a serious take. At the other extreme, Darren Cooper was over the top as Dame Fatima Fandango, although none of his variously outrageous costumes appeared remotely middle-eastern.
A New Mills panto is a celebration of talent of all ages, with a number of different dance groups in the large cast. Curiously, the various groups were colour coded, although it was clear by the average height of team that it represented a different age group. You can get away with anything in a panto so rather than try to represent tradition Arabian village costumes, all the dancers wore bright DayGlo outfits. This certainly gave a colourful vibrancy to the stage.
For this show, there was very little in the way of physical staging with the set for most scenes being just a back-cloth, although the scene paintings were impressively detailed and well chosen. The recurring market scene did have some effective stalls laden with wares and the cave scene worked well with good sound effects contributing to the image of an opening suddenly appearing in a rock face.
‘Ali Baba And The Forty Thieves’ was a bright, colourful evening interspersed with a number of pop songs from the 1960s, '70s and '80s, although interestingly the choice for the finale was the Spice Girls’s ‘Spice Up Your Life’. With most of the cast in tight fitting, fluorescent costumes, none could say this was not an appropriate number to finish on! The accompanying music was, once again provided by Claire Sweeny although for this show, it was just a piano and drums. For the most part, this worked fine but for certain rock numbers, such as Thin Lizzie’s ‘The Boys Are Back In Town’, a solo piano did not quite do it and a little brass or guitar would have certainly helped.
An interesting and colourful presentation by New Mills Art Theatre that ticked all boxes for a traditional panto.
Reviewer - John Waterhouse
on - 2.3.24
on - 2.3.24
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