MOTHER GOOSE AND THE...WOLF. To 17 January.
Greenwich
MOTHER GOOSE AND THE WOLF
by Jonathan Petherbridge
London Bubble at Greenwich Theatre To 17 January 2004
7-10, 13-17 January 2pm, 8-10, 15-17 January 7pm
Audio-described: 10 January 2pm
Runs: 2hr 15min One interval
TICKETS: 020 8858 7755
Review: Timothy Ramsden 2 January
A panto that relies on wit and intelligence veering from amusing to hilarious.A recent BBC Radio 4 series on York Theatre Royal's panto claimed for it a unique post-modern style that allows the central actors (all regulars) to stay in character while delivering lines out of role. Unique? The BBC's Yorkshire folk need an Awayday to Greenwich.
Where London Bubble, experts in theatre and community, again present their panto though they're several decades short of Berwick Kaler's quarter-century Damehood in York. It's colourful, story-led but knowing. For example, in the little round trap-doors where the (only) 2 members of the Red Squirrel Brigade offer help if we enlist with them and sing their song. It's exactly the location of the meerkats from last year's Bubble Ali Baba.
A bit of politics here too, maybe our Squirrel anthem drowns the bland muzak with which Linda Dobell's diminutively sinister, and lonesome, Crone turns people into consumers, compulsively filling fantasy shopping-trolleys. She hopes a golden goose egg will fund her planned transformation of farmland and forest into produce-land for her new creation: supermarkets.
A political edge, or a joke about pantos with political edges (courage, Red Squirrels over at Stratford East audiences are frightening grey squirrel invaders away by pulling horrid faces at them)? You can't take much too seriously when band members keep jumping on stage and interpolating story-comments in the manner of serial yodellers. These lederhosen carollers establish the Blackheath Forest setting (a scripted joke), mapped on the frontcloth with a river that bends suspiciously like the Thames.
There's a cow, a goose, a gander. And two brother Wolves. One'll eat you alive, the other cook you a doubtless organic meal. Eric Maclennan doubles with mad quick-changes - as Mother Goose and co. fail to realise when Mr Nasty's replacing Mr Nice. It's in the out-of-role backchat between Simon Thompson's excellent Dame and Maclennan's Wolf the York parallel operates.
Meanwhile there's plenty of slapstick, with fake pancakes tossed between actors and audience. Thompson goes for wit rather than underwear in his Dame (he wears underwear, he just doesn't make a show of it) - a fine centre to an individual-flavour, home-grown organic panto.
Millie: Marva Alexander
Sandra the Goose: Fiona Creese
Crone: Linda Dobell
Gertrude the Cow: Shaun Haggan
Gertrude the Cow/Troy the Gander: Kieron Harris
The Woodman: Anthony Ekundayo Lennon
The Wolf: Eric MalLennan
Jack: Chris Nayak
Mother Goose: Simon Thomson
Directors: Jonathan Petherbridge, Lawrence Evans
Designer: Pip Nash
Lighting: Peter Higton
Sound: Colin Compost
Composer/Musical director: Chris Larner
Choreographer: Maggie Rawlinson
2004-01-04 16:45:41