JACK AND THE BEANSTALK, Mercury, Colchester to 19 January/CINDERELLA New Wolsey

Colchester

JACK AND THE BEANSTALK
by Peter Shorey

Mercury Theatre To 19 January 2002

Runs 2hr 40min One interval

TICKETS 01206 573948
Review Timothy Ramsden 29 December

Colchester's pantomime scores high on colour and comedy.Judging by this show, Colchester's Christmas audiences not only know what they like, they like what they know. A regular team including writer/Dame Peter Shorey and musical maestro Graeme Du Fresne have been serving up the custard pies and codswallop for the best part of a decade and more people seem to be coming back for more than ever. So to speak.

It's a very good-natured show. When a hapless victim (ie an audience member whose birthday it is) is invited on stage for the slapstick kitchen scene you know they're going to get clean away not only with the ever-vigilant bit of the mind which tells you the theatre won't be letting themselves in for dry-cleaning bills but with a more general feeling of the lack of malice which is instinctive in the fun.

Shorey's script dunks itself in some of the year's favourite corn – the stolen milk flashing across somebody's field of vision is described as past-your-eyes(d – it sounds better than it reads, thank goodness). It also whacks along at a fair lick through situations that stimulate simple responses. In panto characters are less elaborate than visuals and Shorey provides enough of the former, plenty of the latter, including a grand-scale Giant's castle where humans are dwarfed amid huge furniture.

Tina Gray's benevolent gypsy seems marginal to the story but it's nice to have her around when the villainous giant stays an offstage roar until his massive puppet figure appears late on in his own home. Meanwhile the villainy's carried out by Bill and Ben, less the flowerpot men of 1950s TV, more crackpots in their own right. Treslove's Bill comically attempts a sort of efficiency while Delves-Broughton's Ben is a sublime creation, a lumbering lummox of ineffable incomprehension.

Shorey's Dame is a treat too, a diminutive figure who does not so much assert as insinuate herself into the middle of situations. The part might have been written for him. As, of course, it was.

Up the road in Ipswich the New Wolsey's been offering a rock Cinderella. Traffic trouble kept me from act one, but the second half at least showed this panto's been a great success as a concert.

Gypsy Rosita Doritos Patatu: Tina Gray
Bill: Tim Treslove
Ben: Roger Delves-Broughton
Jack Trot: Charlene Robertson
Simon Trot: Seth Jee
Princesss Belfreda: Clare Humphrey
Chorus: Donna Boland, Jenni bowden, Dominic Colchester, Fabiano Martell, Charlie Morgan, Ian Sims
King Ethelbert: Stephen Ley
Dame Trot: Peter Shorey
Daisy: Donna Boland/Ian Sims
Pieman: Fabiano Martell
Town Crier: Donna Boland
Giant Blunderbore: Dominic Colchester
Children: Mitchell Beardsell, Aaron Boyce, Leanne Davey, Georgia Edwards, Nicholas Sherman, Harry Tweddell, Katherine Waring, H#Georgina Wootten/Leah Barnham, Milenna Biinks, Nicole Eve, Kerrie forster, Kirsty Lock, Liam Lunniss, Adam Reakes, Thomas Rice.

Director/Choreographer: Janice Dunn
Designer: Sarah Burton
Lighting: Mark Doubleday
Musical Director: Graeme du Fresne

2002-01-18 08:16:04