| Winter Delight from the Wardens: A Guide and Look-Back |
Aberystwyth Pantomime |
| The Wardens Company , Aberystwyth Arts Centre , January 19, 2026 |
The Wardens Company goes back eighty years, the pantomimes forty. For 2026 a company of forty took the curtain call for the opening night of “Robin Hood”. The majority of the actors, dancers and singers were young. Nathan Guy was a swaggeringly dismissive Sheriff of Nottingham, his nemesis Alex Neil the dashing outlaw of the forest, Robin Hood. Ioan Guile was a Frair Tuck of jolliness, Julie McNicholls his eventual paramour. Miriam Llwyd sparkled again as Maid Marion. Elinor Powell as ever was musical director. Richard Cheshire was not on stage but in the directorial role. The productions below are: 24 January 2025 Dick Whittington “The roster of talent incubated at Aberystwyth Arts Centre over the years who have been propelled to the professional stage is without equal. Miriam Llwyd looks set to join that illustrious roll-call.” * * * * 30 January 2024 Cinderella “Theresa Jones' Baroness has an unequalled sneer of disdain for those she deems beneath her. Hannah Sefton was a dancer in the last outing of “Cinderella” and is a winning Cinders. Alex Neil is a regal lead with a strong voice and commanding princely presence.” 24 January 2024 Cinderella "Becca Riches as Cinderella makes a really solid debut in a Wardens lead role and she, along with the likes of Donna Richards as Fairy Godmother, Bob McIntyre as Terry Tipple, Owen Jac Roberts as DiddiDini and the ever-reliable (and saucy) Julie McNicholls Vale (Cherry), are the glue that holds the whole production together, ably supported by a large and talented chorus, and as good a kids chorus as I can remember – Mali, Maddie and Jenna in particular, were shining stars on this particular evening." * * * * 12 January 2023 Mother Goose “Carl Ryan is Demon Rotten Egg, a villain of sinewy movement in black, red and gold brocade. His antagonist is Julie McNicholls Vale's Fairy Hapus who casts her spells of goodness over the madcap plot with charm and warmth. Donna Clement Richards and Bob McIntyre feature late as Queen and King of Gooseland. Helena Jones is Priscilla the goose, two metres tall and with big beguiling eyes.” * * * * 21 January 2020 Peter Pan “In the middle of mayhem Richard Cheshire would lose wig and all to the line of “If my mother could see me now.” A year ago a backcloth would collapse nightly to reveal Jim Vale and team carrying props and looking startled. This year the pirate gang has lost the freedom of resting in the interval. They roam the foyer in character amidst the drinks and the ice-creams. They are in the auditorium on our return and the young audience loves it. It is bold and it works.” 14 January 2020 Peter Pan "Lucille Richards in her role of Tiger Lilly shoulders significant responsibility and stage time, and her stunning voice is showcased perfectly by her leading a clever arrangement of The Lion Sleeps tonight, ably harmonised by Elin Rees (Pocahontas). The final member of this talented group of youngsters is the versatile Gruffydd Rhys Evans, who injects some welcome humour into every scene." * * * * 13 January 2019 Aladdin "The launderette scene has been kept for its good jokes. Wishee Washee goes through the mangle and comes out in two dimensional form. One of the policemen trio clambers out of the washing machine on a tiny pair of wheels. “I was put on a short cycle” he says. And of course grown-ups go into the dryer and come out in miniature form. After the woks, the Chinese lanterns day 12 is “twelve gallons of water”. Cue water pistols. Nils Marggraf-Turley's stand-out solo trumpet introduces the scene set in the Egyptian hideaway. Lovely liquidy tones flow out from Llew Evans' guitar.” * * * * 12 January 2018 Cinderella "Richard Cheshire's 2018 opening scene puts Donna Richards' Fairy Godmother on stage with a cluster of fairies and elves. The two elves protest that they do not want to be classified as fairies. The players are little, aged eight or nine, but their enunciation is clear. After all, they say, “We’re the National Elf Service.” Thirty children in all play the magical and animal roles on different nights. In addition “Cinderella” has another thirty players on stage of teenage years upwards. The company is overwhelmingly youthful. Given that “community” is a word traded and misused in the counsels of arts policy this is it. Aberystwyth does it for real.” * * * * 19 January 2017 Jack and the Beanstalk “Jordan Jones, just seventeen, is every inch the handsome hero in a wholesome thigh-whacking manner. His failed flying apparatus is teasingly called Queasyjet. Carl Ryan is in gold. He plays a harp. But he is a harp who sings, dances and is possessed of a nice line in camp innuendo. In the same vein King Boris, a strong Philip Day, confesses to a use of viagra. The giant makes a late appearance. He used to be Blunderbore and now he is Giant Trump. Rae Lewis is his gaseous spouse.” * * * * 26 January 2016 Beauty and the Beast “Her nemesis is Kedma Macias’ Frostbite, a striking new villain for the company and one not to be lost, and her protege Angus Marshall’s strutting hulk Gassbag. If there is a highpoint it has to be “the Twelve Days of Christmas” with its manic rush and its collection of unlikely presents that include unwashed socks and an unusually designed item of under-garment.” * * * * 16 January 2015 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs “Marcus Dobson’s bouncing Muddles, first seen in patchwork satin, trades up too for a billowing shirt in the same colour. Richard Cheshire’s Dolly Dumplings- her last appearance as expected decked out in wedding finery- dons the costume of a life-sized golden bumblebee. The backcloths are many and sumptuous and the twenty-one scenes, across castle, village and forest, glowingly lit in Grant Barden’s lighting design.” 12 January 2015 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs "Julie McNicholls returns for a stab at the villain, playing the wicked Queen Cruella with enormous panache, never having to struggle for a boo and putting her formidable vocal talents to work in big, big numbers like “I Put a Spell on You” and “In the Dark of the Night”. She has two fantastic foils in the form of the Man in the Magic Mirror – a deliciously camp, hip-swivelling, Spandex-and-Sequins outing by Carl Ryan, and her beleaguered henchman Herman who longs to be good (Ioan Guile giving it gusto and managing to encapsulate hatefulness, loveability and enormous tracts of comedy with an enviable lightness and fleetness of touch)." 12 January 2015 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs "The stand-out performance for me by far however was Julie McNicholls as Cruella. Julie has been a pantomime regular in Aberystwyth for many years, and the fact that she has made the transition from the Good Fairy to the Pantomime Villain is testament to her versatility as an actress. Her performance as Cruella was excellent – she absolutely rocked that stage as she played a Cruella that was both megalomaniacal and vain, and simperingly sugar sweet." * * * * 12 January 2014 Dick Whittington “Alex Neil’s nasty King Rat, from London, joins forces with local banditry in the form of Theresa Jones’ high-booted Blackheart and Alex McDonald Smith’s one-eyed Blackpatch. Even though Myles McMorrow’s handsome Dick has rescued Bethan Pearce’s lovely Alice, he and his allies, the paradoxically vegetarian cannibals of Skull Island, still need a bit of help. The ratty and piratical forces are bombarded with a hundred sponges hurled at them from every corner of the auditorium.” * * * * 13 January 2013 Aladdin “Richard Cheshire, Karen Evans and her team of five have done the chineserie of Peking full justice. Widow Twankey appears as a multi-tiered pagoda and is expected, in a show-stopping variation on “the Twelve Days of Christmas”, to sing, frolic, run and chuck props around. In the first act he appears as a Chinese take-away. This unique piece of theatre costume culminates in a foot-wide hat that is a bowl of yellow noodles complete with chop-sticks.” * * * * 22 January 2012 Robin Hood “Shall I, boys and girls?” asks Richard Cheshire in the role of Robin Hood’s mother. He holds a can of wallpaper paste a few inches away from the head of Marcus Dobson’s Simple Simon. To his right Jess Jones’ Friar Tuck stands by Rob O’Malley’s Much the Miller’s Son. Tuck too holds a can of paste primed and ready. The wall-papering scene usually occurs towards the close of the Wardens annual show, its narrative pretext the castle’s preparation for the final wedding. Here, it occurs between two woodland scenes.” * * * * 10 January 2011 Cinderella "Richard Cheshire populates his woodland with rabbits and foxes, an owl, four little blackbirds. The song chosen is “I’ve been dreaming of love’s first kiss”. It is beautifully sung, it comes from “Enchanted” and enchanting it is, utterly. Even the lovers’ kiss, from the view of the stalls, looks as real and as romantic as it can be. The second act opened to spontaneous applause. The Prince’s Ball has enough sumptuous lilac and satin to do justice to Covent Garden putting on “Rosenkavalier.” As a vision it is simply, sumptuously, gorgeous." * * * * 08 January 2010 Jack and the Beanstalk "David Blumfield as Fungus Fleshcreep- motto “It’s gorgeous to be bad”- with his dismissal of the audience as “pimply Penparcau plonkers.” Theresa Jones’s confident Mash had a very funny scene as a choir master in which she marched her choir off to execute one by one the singer who was out of tune, the joke being that she misses the obvious culprit. There was also the scene that never fails to baffle in which a single revolving ten pound note solves a four-way chain of inter-related indebtedness." * * * * 11 January 2009 Sinbad the Sailor “And finally to the Cheshire-Guile partnership. One gets to wear his usual eight costumes- a high point being a black PVC miniskirt and tottering heels. The other sheds all dignity, if he ever had any, in a leopard skin dress and pith helmet. (An entry marked by the band with “the Lion Sleeps Tonight.”) They hold the stage with the sheer enjoyment of being there.” * * * * 8 January 2008: Mother Goose “One of the features of the Aber productions is that it gives gifted young performers extended audience experience over a couple of weeks. Two years ago Charlotte Griffiths was an affecting Beauty (as in “and the Beast”) and last year returned as a sassy gang hanger-on in “West Side Story”. This year, in the role of Jilly, Lauren Ricketts exuded a joyous stage presence.” |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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