MOTHER GOOSE. To 6 January.
Chipping Norton
MOTHER GOOSE
by Simon Brett music by Peter Pontzen
Chipping Norton Theatre To 6 January 2007
Various dates 1.30pm, 2pm, 4pm, 4.30pm, 5.30pm, 7.30pm, 7.45pm
Runs 2hr 5min One interval
TICKETS: 01608 642350
Review: Timothy Ramsden 16 December
Happy times in Chipping Norton.
You can doubtless find bigger, starrier pantomimes this year. But you’ll be hard put to find one where the ingredients are so neatly assembled and so good-humouredly performed as in this rural Oxfordshire town’s enterprising theatre. Writer Simon Brett and director Caroline Sharman trust their audience to follow a good story, enjoy amiable humour and the intimacy of a theatre which recalls a small Georgian playhouse. Stage and audience interact beautifully, while the regulation Chipping Norton panto chase easily accommodates characters clambering between stage and gallery.
It’s a bright, light show, in the highly-painted settings and in its belief in essential human goodness. People are not bad, they are made bad, here by Andrew Piper’s highly-hissable Demon of Discontent. Otherwise, it’s a world of Goodhearts and Geese.
Maybe Chipping Norton provides a privileged view of life (“How do you make someone from Banbury Cross?” “Tell them you’re from Chipping Norton,” runs one of Brett’s statutory local references). And perhaps an influx of wealthy outsiders to the attractive stone-built town is reflected in self-confident hero Jack (Adam Lea, ever-ready to pose) and his sophisticated girlfriend Jill (Charlotte Thompson, future self-confidence preparing under childhood reticence) who contrast slow-thinking Simon (Simon McCoy happy in his slow-wits) and his grinningly adoring Mary (Allie Croker, suggesting little will ever trouble Mary’s happiness).
But it’s Jack who goes to the bad, as Discontent gets into him, and Simon who comes up trumps, while if we had to put money on which of the 2 marriages would work better, mine would be on the reliable Simon and loving Mary any day.
Here are couples who want to be happy, plus a Mother Goose who spreads more than a little happiness as she collects nursery rhymes, and has enough self-knowledge finally to reject the vanity for lost youth Discontent stirs in her. The song she shares with the local Squire, also freed from Discontent’s infection, about ‘Wrinkly Romance’ completes the optimism of a show where the integrity of script, Peter Pontzen’s attractive score and direction of a delightful company around Dudley Rogers’ fussily friendly Mother G, joyfully combine.
Simon Goose: Simon McCoy
Mary Goodheart: Allie Croker
Jill Goose: Charlotte Thompson
Jack: Adam Lea
Squire George Goodheart: Stan Pretty
Mother Goose: Dudley Rogers
Demon Discontent: Andrew Piper
Fairy Fulfilment: Elizabeth Rowden
Priscilla the Goose: Jennine Cousins/Danielle Gardner
Children: Jennine Cousins, Sam John, Istarin McVicar, Daniel Mountain, Josh Roe, Jodie Tyack/Rebekah Burman, Danielle Gardner, Laurence Kilsby, Nico Mendoza, Sam Weston, Ruby Young
Swings: Eve Norman, Harry Parker
Director: Caroline Sharman
Designer: Simon Higlett
Lighting: Paul J Need
Musical Director: Peter Pontzen
Choreographers: Tim & Leesa Wilkins
Costume: Angela Dodson
2006-12-18 12:28:37