| Colour, Comedy, Community & Much Else |
Aberystwyth Pantomime |
| The Wardens Company- Jack and the Beanstalk , Aberystwyth Arts Centre , January 19, 2017 |
A time of transition is a test for any company. It applies as much to the arts as any other sector. The Wardens can lay claim to being possibly Wales' most enduring company. The name itself is a giveaway. 2017, if not its most significant year of change, must feature as one of the company's years of transition. It is a change that has been handled with much wisdom. Richard Cheshire is director and uncredited author but has left the stage itself. This may sound small but it is not. There are now parents with young audience members who can remember no other pantomime dame than Richard Cheshire. His presence, one of warmth, ease and over-the-top ostentation of costume, dominated to the extent that it generated its own joke. An actor sifting through a larder would find amid the inventory of cheeses “a rich hard Cheshire.” “If my mother could see me now” became a line of regularity to be anticipated. The first tribute due to this “Jack and the Beanstalk” is that it evokes no nostalgia. Taking a company across a bridge between eras is itself an art. It is to let go of what cannot be replicated and to focus on the innate strengths. From that something new and fresh can evolve as spur for the next chapter. The Wardens have always put on a big show and that is unchanged. It lasts two hours and forty minutes with interval. Its production values are high. The full company exceeds forty in number. The last scene, effectively the curtain call, is a symphony of yellow satin and sequins. This third week of January has been one of unchanging grey in the world outside the stage. “Jack and the Beanstalk” is drenched in primary colours. Daisy (Bob McIntyre and Harry Edmunds) has big emotional eyes and a bit of a sense of humour. She is offered for sale at a circus. The scene has a big Madness number with Huw Bates' Huw Skates in the lead. The circus itself is a melee of sensuous dancers, strongmen and tightrope walkers. The human canonball is not to be seen. “No, he was fired” explains one of the characters. The strength of the Wardens is in the company, in particular its core who have worked together season on season. Many a young lead has moved to professional training in dance or song. The likes of Rachel Crane, Joseph Scannell, Mari Fflur, the sisters Keyworth are missed but not regretted. Talent should rise to its fullest level of realisation. But to look at the group of under-tens who are part of the dancing troupe is to see some sharp footwork. They are the work of new choreographer Ciaran Connolly. At the moment their names are unknown but they are evidence that the Wardens, and the Arts Centre, are growing their leads for the next decade. As for the leads of 2017 some are regular. Julie McNicholls Vale is absent for the very best reason in the world. Jordan Ainslie-Rogers is a new-comer to a principal role. He moves beautifully and blends with the front-line team. If anything Marcus Dobson just gets better, the playing with its customary goofing mixed in with mature dancing. In the sing-along, the last scene while everyone backstage is changing costume, he holds the stage alone with ease. On this night Cerys Hurford and Thomas Jenkins, aged ten and drawn from the audience, are his spirited helpers. With Richard Cheshire's presence in the director's chair alone the nature of the show has evolved. It has an enhanced tautness. The role of Dame Trot has been given to the best pair of hands going. But the directorial wisdom has been to let Ioan Guile be Ioan Guile. The “We've got to wall-paper the giant's castle” scene has been dropped. The solo string of slightly aged gags has gone. With guile and Guile there is no scope for nostalgia. There is less “hi ya gang” repartee from Simon. In its place is composite singing and comedy. It has the loose-tightness that is illusion to the audience but is in fact tight discipline, in part the director's skill, in part a company who knows each other in depth. A highlight is the group scene of the alumni from the Bow Street Academy of Music. My companion this year is of a seasoned sensibility, not prone to giggle without cause. This “Jack and the Beanstalk” elicited laughter that was regular, uninhibited and deserved. The script too has evolved. Its tradition was an engaging innocence pitched at the very young. Modernity has slipped in but it is not like the big-ticket city pantos dependent on jokes about television. “Totes amaze” says Somee Malik's Princess Jill. Theresa Jones has become the prime minister of the same first name. It is good casting. Theresa of Aberystwyth has the same slimness, class and stylishness of costume and hair as her real-world Downing Street counterpart. 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. This is an audience grown up on CGI but a real-life ten foot high giant still gets its own round of applause. He gets his comeuppance with an iron courgette courtesy of Lynne Baker's all-vegetable fairy. Ioan Guile has a costume, naturally garish, that he says is his Brexit dress. “You think you want me out of it. But if you really think about it, you're not so sure.” In the five-strong band under Elinor Powell's Llew Evans' guitar is thrilling. Aberystwyth's New Year show gets many a regular visitor. In the interval a veteran is to be seen. “How are you liking it?” “One of their best” is the prompt reply. I think she's right. |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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