EVERY year when the pantomime season comes around, friends ask “how CAN you bear to see so many again?” and I tell them, very seriously and hoping not to sound too preachy or pompous, “Well, it is the first theatre show that most people will see, and that is the moment that they will first experience the magic of a live performance. You can’t get it from film or television, and it matters.”
On Saturday afternoon at Shaftesbury Arts Centre my faith was totally confirmed. A little girl, 14-months old, stole the show. In the front row with her family, she became immediately involved in the story. No-one had to cajole her to play along – there she was following the action, desperate to get up on stage with the rest of the colourfully-dressed Munchkins. This was her third pantomime, her mother said. Her first was when she was six weeks old, and there had been another since then. She loved them. She has clearly “got the bug” and it’s not something to be cured by vaccination. I guess it will be a lifelong passion, and I can only wish her as much pleasure, excitement, emotion, laughter, stimulation, satisfaction and camaraderie as it has given me, ever since my mother took me to see Cinders and her horse-drawn carriage.
Back to the show. Director Sophia Ruel, who also designed the inventive set and wonderful costumes, chose Nigel Holmes’s version of the story, which he insists comes direct from the 1900 book by Frank L Baum and NOT from the legendary film version, which came out 39 years later and is still heavily protected by copyright. No ruby slippers or “over the rainbow”’ songs here!
Sophia envisaged the story unfolding in a steampunk setting, and very well the enormous cast and backstage crew accomplished it – there is even a magnificently painted proscenium arch for this SAC production.
Mr Holmes has turned the often-performed-at-Christmas story into a “traditional” pantomime, replete with a dame, knockabout comic duo, thigh-slapping prince and fragile princess to take their places next to Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion, arch-baddie the Wicked Witch of the West … and of course the Wizard. It makes for a very long show.
The Shaftesbury production has some wonderful performances, as the familiar tale takes Dorothy from Kansas and her friends in search of the Emerald City. There are 31 actors and a vast backstage team, all listed in the beautifully designed programme. On the afternoon I saw it, Amy Arkle was playing the dame, in the person of Aunt Em brought from the wrecked house in Kansas to Munchkinland. She alternated the role with Phil Emsworth, and obviously enjoyed the chance to go way WAY over the top. Does the Wizard of Oz need a pantomime dame? Would Bible Belt America have turned a blind eye to all the innuendo? … it was a fun performance, vividly costumed, for all that.
River Munday is a spirited Dorothy, helped by Grace Guiver’s Glinda and Molly Rowland’s Witch of the North. SAC stalwart Marie Stubbs joined Liv Pretlove as the comedy duo of Ug and Lee, with Amelia Persson as Prince Smarmy and Chloe Redwood as Princess Porcelain. Marin Chalavatzis took to the role of the Guardian of Emerald City, marching Peter Morris’s loveable Scarecrow, Tabby Miles’s perfectly articulated Tin Man and Jon Corry’s wonderfully cowardly Lion to meet the Wizard.
The entrance of Sophie Lester’s Wicked Witch electrifies the audience as well as the rest of the company. Verdantly costumed and made up, with her clawed fingers and dominatrix fibre-optic whip at the ready, she was the classic baddie, surrounded by evil flying monkeys.
One of the most important elements of the traditional pantomime is the percussion, tapping out the rhythms of the songs and underlining the jokes, falls and crescendos. There was none here, and the chosen songs, modern by comparison to those cinematic anthems that are indelibly associated with the Wizard of Oz, were impressive when performed by the whole company, but almost lost as solos and duets, when even simple rhythms were missed. Not so with the Wicked Witch’s stunning vocals.
The matinee audience was entranced by the show, as was the mini-star in the front row.
It seems churlish to criticise, when there is SO MUCH to praise. But really, less is more and there are many much better versions of this timeless story.
GP-W