Tag: pantomime

THE LITTLE MERMAID – The Pantomime 2021
Circa Theatre, Taranaki St., Wellington

Written by Simon Leary and Gavin Rutherford
Directed by Susan Wilson
Music arranged and directed by Michael Nicholas Williams
Choreography by Natasha McAllister and Jthan Morgan
Set and Projection design by Anna Lineham Robinson
Lighting Design by Marcus McShane
Costume Design by Sheila Horton

Circa One, Circa Theatre, 1 Taranaki St.,Wellington
Wednesday, 17th November, 2021

Until 23^rd December, 2021

My first thought upon hearing about the projected scenario for this year’s Circa Pantomime was surprise that a story with grim and murderous elements (Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Little Mermaid”) had been chosen – not having seen or even registered the Disney film adaptation of the story I wasn’t aware that the inevitable process of sanitisation of this story had already begun, as had previously happened to countless other folk- and fantasy-tales adapted for children over the years.

With the prospect of a remake by Disney of the story due for release in 2023 it would seem that “The Little Mermaid” has joined the select “classic fantasy tale” group, duly reinforced, of course, by pantomimic treatment, as witness Circa’s energetic and highly recreative adaptation of the story.

My second thought, independent of the above, was stimulated at the theatre itself upon my reading director Susan Wilson’s paean of praise (thoroughly well-deserved, incidentally) in the programme for all the people, past and present, who have contributed their talents and energies to the Circa Pantomimes for the previous 17 seasons, more-than-usually laudatory – was this some kind of valedictory address on the director’s part? Time will, of course, tell, but even the most successful theatrical undertakings, by dint of their nature, don’t last forever and needs must undergo refurbishment of some kind.

I was thinking particularly of Gavin Rutherford’s superb series of “Dames” which we’ve enjoyed over the years, and which delivered yet again this time round with just as much bristling energy and droll insouciance as his character needed, his “Shelly Bay” persona a brilliant throwback in itself to a time when the world was younger and less “submerged” with troubles, Rutherford’s capacities for drollery here seemingly inexhaustible!

Of course, this was, both onstage and off, an ensemble effort – and Rutherford’s charismatic “Shelly Bay” was more than amply matched by the tale’s “movers and shakers”, both institutional and everyday – Simon Leary’s King Lando, the ex-restauranter-cum-ruler of the largely-submerged 3021 version of Wellington, one whose on-the-spot land speculations have secured him power and influence over what is now left of the eastern “Heights”, posed a credible romantic attraction for the “poor fisher woman” Shelly Bay, when allied to a past association the pair had that Lando was now doing his best to escape from! He had as well, a kind of “alter ego”, a puppet stingray called “Death Shadow, one that flitted voraciously in-and-out between the hapless characters that crossed his path.

King Lando’s rival on all counts came in the form of Kathleen Burns’ wonderfully-vampish Bermuda, the Sea-Witch, a stunning portrayal enhanced by an octopus-tentacled costume whose every movement riveted the attention! Bermuda’s more-than-apparent nastiness was mitigated by her disdain for humankind and the havoc wrought upon the natural world by its representatives, her theatrical vow to “rid the world of humans” a kind of perverse “corrective” to Lando’s self-serving power-grab.

Equally spectacular in a more benign context was Jthan Morgan’s Queen Neptuna, a tragic, subaqueous “Queen of the Night” kind of figure (and similarly bewailing the loss of a daughter), looking and sounding the part as if to the manner born! It was a tour-de-force performance by Morgan, as he had to switch roles occasionally to being King Lando’s Public Relations agent “Shaggy” (and put up with the inevitable barrage of innuendo!)  – Morgan’s extra distinction was his “Shaggy” character’s adeptness with sign language, which certainly resonated with everybody, in the wake of the last couple of years’ Covid updates!

The younger generation was represented by Natasha McAllister  in the title role, as Queen Neptuna’s daughter Coral, charming us from the outset with her singing voice, which of course she has to later relinquish so her fins and tail can be changed into legs after she falls in love with a human – who happens to be a boy called Lyall, who happens to be the son of Shelly, thus further extending the show’s vistas when looking back at a world lost to the rapacious exigencies of climate change.

Lyall was here played by Jake McKay, who to his credit seemed remarkably “boy-next-door-like” considering his mother Shelly had at various times told him he was “special”, being an “immaculate conception”. Apart from each having similarly patronymic-like names, McAlister and McKay seemed ideally suited for their roles – a happy stage partnership! Finally, there was Trae te Wiki’s portrayal of Crabby, the hermit crab who’s Coral’s best friend, and who’s the “ordinary, everyday” personality, the “Everyman” of the drama, who comes across as warm-hearted and faithful, and very much the victim of circumstances -most endearingly she adapts as best she can to life’s changing situations, winning our sympathies in the process.

My third thought (or is it my fourth?), having introduced and summarised the individual personas and characteristics of the show’s dramatis personae, is a reiteration of  my amazement and appreciation of the sheer raw energy this cast puts into the performance (a quality also remarked on by my companion for the occasion, herself a “performance artist”, and as such directly appreciative of the levels of high-octane output generated by all concerned – whether emoting, singing or dancing (or all three at once), the output was almost tangible in its crackling voltage.

This quality was never more never more apparent than during the production’s songs (the actors supported to the hilt by their inexhaustible Music Director Michael Nicholas Williams via his arrangements and on-the-spot accompaniments), Natasha McAllister’s voice soaring  at the beginning, resonating in the memory during her “mute” period (displaying her new-found sign-language skills as the rest of the cast sang “You Can Count on Me”), and gloriously restored for the rousing finale. McAllister’s and Jthan Morgan’s  inspired choreography throughout gave the songs extra “punch”, Sheila Horton’s colourful and apposite costumes also contributing to the flow of body, texture and colour (as I write this I can still see Kathleen Burns’ Bermuda and her witchety tentacles!), and the whole was mellifluously (and sometimes startlingly) illuminated by Marchs McShane’s lighting, adding even further dimensions to Anna Lineham Robinson’s environmentally dystopian sets, evoking a futuristic world we’d probably rather not try to imagine…….

On the strength of what her “support team” of actors and technicians generated through their efforts, director Susan Wilson had every right and cause to thus “stop and reflect” for us on the achievement of this and past pantomime productions, and, of course, revel in the deserved satisfaction of knitting all these strands together to memorable effect.

 

Circa Theatre presents:
ALICE IN WONDERLAND – The Pantomime
Written by Simon Leary and Gavin Rutherford (after Lewis Carroll)

Director: Susan Wilson
Musical Director/Arranger: Michael Nicholas Williams
Set Designer: Lucas Neal
Lighting: Marcus McShane
Costumes: Sheila Horton
Musical Staging: Leigh Evans
Technical: Deb McGuire (Lighting) / Paul Lawrence (sound)

Cast – Gavin Rutherford : Dame Marjori
Natasha McAllister: Alice
Sarah Lineham: White Rabbit/Caterpillar
Andrew Paterson: Tweedledum
Susie Berry: Tweedledee/Voice of Cheshire Cat
Jonathan Morgan: The Queen of Hearts
Simon Leary: The Mad Hatter
David Duchovny Dormouse: Himself

Circa Theatre, Wellington
Tuesday, 19^th November, 2019

(until 22^nd December, then 2-11 January 2020)

This show was, I thought, an absolute knockout on the performance strength of the songs and their associated choreography alone!  Michael Nicholas Williams’ skilled arrangements of no less than thirteen (mostly?) home-grown classics, along with Leigh Evans’ splendid choreography lent musical magic to a scenario whose script I thought suitably action-packed enough, if not with quite the consistent raciness and fluency of other Circa pantos I’ve seen. Still, a talented cast under Susan Wilson’s direction here imbued the song-and-movement action with the kind of energy and seamless flow of engagement we couldn’t help but give ourselves over to – music theatre at its most happily compelling.

For this reason I took away at the end most readily a sense of ensemble created in these pieces, around which everything else revolved – a “whole greater than the sum of parts” feeling, which added to the overall pleasurable “glow” of the experience. Of course, people of my generation, steeped in the Lewis Carroll books and their iconic references (a number of which were quoted verbatim in the dialogue) would be all too ready to succumb to the tried and true attractions and fascinations of the various characters and their antics – and thus it was, here. And even for younger people, the scenario of a “Wonderland” where the unexpected becomes the norm can be accorded parallels with our more-than-usually mixed-up world, so continuing to lend itself as much, if not even more, to the kind of absurdities that appealed to the original author’s fanciful imagination.

Writers Simon Leary and Gavin Rutherford cleverly work local and topical references into the presentation via character’s names (here was Dame Marjori Banks Street, talking about ex-husband Kent Terrace, and the “other woman”, Courtenay Place!), and some hinted allusions to certain political leaders and their interaction in the characters of the Queen of Hearts and The Jabberwock! Film-maker Peter Jackson also gets a mention as the alleged uncle of Alice, Dame Marjori fancying her chances of making a valuable “contact” with someone whose connections might further her aspirations as a hitherto undiscovered performing artist (with a potently expressive right hand!).

The show’s scenario revolves around the circumstance in the original story of a famous theft – that of the tarts, made (as in the well-known nursery-rhyme) by the Queen of Hearts, though here, it’s the White Rabbit (rather than the Knave of Hearts) who’s placed under suspicion as the thief, and threatened with execution – naturally, Alice and Dame Marjorie, along with the Rabbit’s Wonderland friend, the Mad Hatter, strive to release the latter from the Queen’s clutches. Their adversaries include not only the Queen’s servants-cum-hit-men Tweedledum and Tweedledee, but the fearsome Jabberwock, whose presence is, until it finally makes an unexpected appearance, powerfully evoked at various stages of the story with a portentous leitmotif accompanied by a sudden darkening of the atmosphere – most effective!

It wouldn’t be a proper Pantomime without participation from the audience, most ostensibly the children who are summonsed onto the stage at one point by Dame Marjori to help thwart the  Queen of Hearts’ vengeful intentions towards the Rabbit. It’s done here with the power of love by the children holding up pictures of the Cheshire Cat’s smiling face and singing along with the Avalanche City song “Love, love, love”, which exercise comes off a treat (complete with mandatory-cum-heartwarming in-situ photograph-snapping!) There were also frequent exhortations  made to us to greet different characters, answer various questions or warn people of danger (to which we readily responded). As well, the Dame used her roving eye to suitable effect on the audience, at one point early in the piece lighting on a certain gentleman, asking him for his name, and then to our recurring amusement throughout the evening keeping him within coo-ee and on the boil!

In his tenth pantomime role, Gavin Rutherford again bestrode the Circa stage like a colossus, holding the audience in the palm of Dame Marjori’s hand as she described her “poor, lonely, widow-woman status”, though playing the “abandoned-wife” card this time round, courtesy of her absent husband Kent Terrace. Her flirtation and would-be liaison with Simon Leary’s wonderful, and hyperactively charismatic Mad Hatter promised much (with musically-framed “can this be he/she?” moments), before failing, at the cusp, to deliver, for reasons best seen rather than explained…..

Compelling, too, was Jonathan Morgan’s prima-donna-ish Queen of Hearts, as wilful and volatile as her divine right permitted her to be, responsive one second to the children’s exhortations of love, and then transforming into Gorgon-like aspect through the influence of the evil Jabberwock. Her song “Tears” in tandem with her cohorts Tweedledum and Tweedledee (Andrew Paterson and Susie Berry respectively) was, like their first-half “Out on the Street”, a highlight of the show, the three going spectacularly through their paces with fabulously-timed teamwork and superbly-concerted voices. And while Sarah Lineham’s character-parts of the White Rabbit and the Caterpillar were relatively low-key, the roles requiring more finely crafted than full-blooded, in-your-face assumptions, she came into her own in the song-and-dance routines as a paid-up-vibrant component of the ensemble.

As, of course, did the equally fine-tuned Alice of Natasha McAllister, whose role throughout was a kind of fulcrum, both as a foil for the outrageous Dame Marjori and a focus for everybody else, as their ostensible “dreamer”, an enabler whose presence was the sounding-board for practically all the other characters, her own beautifully presented in every way, a “constant” whose energy and vocal strength told in the concerted numbers which gave the show its special distinctiveness,

Backdropped by Lucas Neal’s simple but effective set of playing cards and a classic pantomimic “disappearing hole” part of whose charm and intent was its emphasis on “suggestion”, the non-stop action whirled kaleidoscopically around and about the performing-space to visceral effect, enriched by technicians Deb McGuire (lighting) and Paul Lawrence (sound) readily evoking the baleful presence of the Jabberwock. Sheila Horton’s costumings helped bring the characters to life, between dressing Alice classically (a la John Tenniel’s original illustrations) and the Mad Hatter fantastically, the latter complete with glove-puppet Dormouse. Director Susan Wilson enabled these disparate impulses and energies as a convincing and hugely entertaining whole, a show from which one felt like dancing into and through the streets afterwards, celebrating and prolonging its feast of music, movement, and laughter.

 

 

 

 

Circa Theatre presents:
PETER PAN – the pantomime

Adapted from J.M.Barrie’s play “Peter Pan” (1904)
and novel “Peter and Wendy” (1911)
by Pinky Agnew and Lorae Parry

Cast: Gavin Rutherford (Katie Pie) / Cary Stackhouse (Peter Pan) / Camilla Besley (Wendy)
Simon Leary (Mr. Darling, Captain Hook)
Bronwyn Turei (Mrs.Darling, Xena Lily, Tinker Bell, Areffa Plankton)
Jeff Kingsford-Brown (Winston, Smee) / Ben Emerson (Dunnie)
Manuel Solomon (Nana, Hone)

Production: Director – Susan Wilson
Musical Director/Arranger – Michael Nicholas Williams
Set Designer – John Hodgkins
Lighting – Jennifer Lal
Costumes: Sheila Hoton
Musical staging- Leigh Evans

Circa Theatre (Circa One), Wellington
Saturday, 18th November, 2017

(until 23rd December, 2017)

Now here was fun heaped up in spadefuls onto classic, tried-and-true fantasy with a splendid pantomimic treatment of J.M.Barrie’s play “Peter Pan: the boy who wouldn’t grow up”, beloved of generations over a century of years. Writers Pinky Agnew and Lorae Parry, in their first-ever pantomime, managed to give us all the trappings of the art-form – music, slapstick comedy and topical jokes – while maintaining enough of those iconic links with the original story to cast a distinctive aura over the high-speed happenings of the fantastical plot.

Barrie’s 1904 play itself had high-pantomimic aspects involving audience participation, principally to do with the fairy character Tinker Bell, who, at one stage of the story drinks poison intended for Peter, and whose survival is “thrown over” to the audience’s children, when they are told that if they believe in fairies, Tinker Bell’s life will be saved. Here, the children were invited to the stage to add physical presence to their voices in their bid to “save Tinker Bell”, with heart-warming results, doubtless generating many a precious lasting memory within those ultra-receptive minds.

Being the “state of the nation” animals that they are, writers Agnew and Parry adroitly spiced the tale’s context with a handful of social and political observations, mostly delivered by the superb Gavin Rutherford as “Katie Pie”, the pantomime Dame with a distinctly Aro Valley Girl flavour, acquainting us with her hand-to-mouth existence in struggling to cope with her landlord’s putting up the rent, but crossing the haves/have-nots divide with aplomb as a harbour-ferry-travelling nanny to the children of a Days Bay household, the Darling family, on this particular evening Mr and Mrs being dinner guests of self-proclaimed right-wing radio and TV presenter Mike Hoskings.

Intriguing separate realities kicked in with the disclosure of the identity of Katie Pie’s landlord, none other than the rapacious, wheedling Captain Hook himself, his character at one point reinforced by way of some slightly miscalculated by-play involving an eponymous right-handed appendage – “Have we “hooked” up somewhere before?” – getting caught in Katie Pie’s dress in what I thought was a somewhat gratuitously-emphasised manoeuvre ….or was the snag accidental, and the near contortionist byplay a resourceful rescue operation? – we’ll never know!

Simon Leary bestrode the thinly-veiled “divide” between quasi-respectable, portfolio-clad predatory landlord, and out-and-out pirate, his Captain Hook extravagant of manner and resplendent of garb, displaying a veneer of heroic stylishness barely concealing impulses of cruelty criss-crossed with slash-strokes of memories of ticking clocks and crocodile’s jaws!

Another byplay was Jeff Kingsford-Brown’s “Winston Tweeters” cameo, the ferryman who here silenced the imagined vocal efforts of any number of Venetian gondoliers, with his spirited ditty “Hop in the waka / and give ’em a shocker”. From such appearances, Kingsford-Brown’s morphing into the piratical Smee, Hook’s right-hand (!) man, was an utter delight, particularly his brigandish rendition of Herman’s Hermits’ ‘”I’m into something good” as the chemistry between him and Katie Pie lit up in spectacular waves of bi-partisan emotion.

Perhaps the evening’s most varied high-octane output of on-stage energies came from the multi-talented Bronwyn Turei,  introduced firstly as Katie Pie’s daughter, the warrior princess Xena Lily, but reconstituting herself as Mrs Darling, the socialite mother of Wendy and baby Michael, before slaying youthful hearts in the aisles as the jealous and possessive, but fiercely loyal and courageous Tinker Bell , in deadly danger after swallowing poison to save Peter, her only true love. It remained for her to summons a kind of mermaid chorus line as backing for “Areefa Plankton” in yet a further oceanic surge of irrepressible song-and-dance energy.

Both Cary Stackhouse’s Peter Pan and Camilla Besley’s Wendy exuded youthful wholeheartedness, Stackhouse’s wide-eyed, open-faced “child of nature” aspect made a perfect foil for Camilla Besley’s equally fresh though more feet-on-the-ground Wendy, as determined in her own way as her more artless, unfettered companion. Each required a bit more vocal heft in places, but made up in physical directness what their work was wanting in sheer volume of voice – as both were newly graduated students each could reasonably expect further developments as their respective voices matured.

Completing the cast were the two Lost Boys, played by Ben Emerson and Manuel Solomon, the latter also contributing some energetic routines doggy-style as the Darling’s pet dog Nana. These were thinly-disguised representations of recently-ousted “lost” parliamentarians, here named “Dunnie” and “Hone” respectively, their singing and dancing bursting at the seams with stylish gusto – I can’t resist enjoying once again their “moment” of confession at bringing Wendy to earth with their arrows on her arrival in Neverland, with the plaintively-sung words,”Twang! Twang! – we shot her down!”

I must confess that, for me, part of the fun of shows like these is the clever reworking of new lyrics into familiar classic “hit” tunes – somehow it contributes to the “outrageous” aspect of the show, the above instance a rib-tickling example for me. Michael Nicholas Williams’ arrangements and on-stage realizations held us in thrall throughout, however popular or otherwise the material – in one instance near the beginning we were dizzyingly tangoed, murder-mysteried and balladed through the magic portals of Xanadu in what seemed like a series of rapidly-drawn breaths, along an exhilarating musical ride.

Everything made eye-catching use of colour (Hook’s costume in particular a visual treat) mobility (the stage readily doubled as either oceanic or harbour waters on which boats could pursue their course, and crocodiles could swiftly stalk their prey) and spectacle (a wonderful cosmic realization as Peter and Wendy fly through the starry divide and into Neverland – all credit to Sheila Horton’s costumes, Jennifer Lal’s lighting and John Hodgkins’ evocative and flexible sets. With Leigh Evans’ rapid-fire deployment of the actors’ choreographic energies, and Susan Wilson’s judicious hand on the show’s pacing and dynamic variations, we in the audience were literally kept on the boil throughout.

Cast and production team deserve every success with this show – no better gauge of entertainment effectiveness was provided by my next-seat fellow audience member (a prominent Wellington composer), whose laughter rang out more-or-less continually at the moments-per-minute parade of risible enjoyment to be had from this delightful “Peter Pan”.

See also reviews at Theatreview –
https://www.theatreview.org.nz/reviews/review.php?id=10759