WEANS IN THE WOOD. To 7 January.
Glasgow
WEANS IN THE WOOD
by Forbes Masson
Tron To 7 January 2006
various dates 1pm, 5pm, 7.30pm, 8pm
Runs 1hr 55min One interval
TICKETS: 0141 552 4267
www.tron.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 19 December
I really thought culture was supposed to improve the mind. Yet here's Forbes Masson, considerable recent experience acting with the ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY under his belt, and has it done anything for his taste in puns,other bad jokes or plot devices? It has not. His new Tron panto's as cheeky as ever, with its setting in Pantoland Primary (part of the Tartanian Education System), where teacher Una Milroy is attempting to instil the rules of pantomime into new boy Baxter Beattie and keen student Logan MacLean. Given the wealth of Scottish panto tradition captured in those names, and the description of other Glasgow Theatres as various types of school (from the swanky, panto-performer poaching King's down), it seems the main thing his Stratford experience has done for Masson is given him a taste for name-dropping in-jokes.
But an enemy stalks the wooded world outside school, in the shape of a sweet-man less interested in feeding children than in using them as food for his own delight. This son-of-a-baker villain soaks up the audience boos, just as a cheery squirrel (red, of course) helps out as audience cheerleader and plot-salvager, with an amount of energy that is incredible, given the sprinkling of 3-show days throughout the Tron schedule.
The theatre jokes are good ones, but have an in-crowd feel to them. There's plenty of quickfire humour about panto conventions too as Masson has fun pointing out panto's structural devices and such features as audience-participation, singing and sweet-throwing which he happily uses as he goes along.
There's plenty of action, and colourful sets (lengthy set-changes are another factor he points out). Yet there's a cost to all the knowingness. This isn't really a panto to believe in (if he ever did Peter Pan you could imagine a Masson Peter telling an audience, "I know you lot don't believe in fairies but we need to help out 'cause the NHS can't see to Tinkerbell the day."). Go along wanting to have a good time and you almost certainly will - and the in-references certainly beat blue humour as an adult component any day. But there's not quite the drive of his best work to win less well-disposed audiences over. Still, you could do a lot worse than join the class at Pantoland Primary.
Fulton Funnock: George Drennan
Shirl the gingery squirrel: Helen MacAlpine
Baxter Beattie: Kevin Lennon
Bruce the B & Q Spruce/Lumpy Pumpy: Linda Duru
Miss Una Milroy: Robert Carr
Logan MacLean: Sally Reid
Dorothy/Lumpy Pumpy: Peter Screen
Understudy: Mark Prendergast
Director: Gordon Dougall
Designer: Vicki Cowan-Ostersen
Lighting: Paul Sorley
Choreographer: Linda Payne
2005-12-19 16:34:40