Red Riding Hood

Reviews

An unusual panto, and a production which celebrates the local Blackmore community, with lots of name-checks (Budgen's, anyone?) and disparaging references to the bigger, uglier towns surrounding it.

It's unpredictable fun, too, with the sheep unmasked as spies and the big bad Wolf a cuddly vegetarian, appealingly played by Linda Raymond.

There are familiar panto favourites - a black-hearted villain from melodrama (Keith Goody), a thigh-slapping Prince (Charley Magee), a charming heroine (Juliet Ware as Little Miss Hood herself) and a glamorous granny as the Dame (Patrick Magee).

Not to mention a surprise late arrival by Santa [Steve Hanning], bringing sweeties for all and some lovely one-liners.

Director Lisa Mathews provides some nice production numbers, a popular audience song and a splendid Anything Goes finale, with choreography by Rosemarie Nelson and MD Shirley Parrott at the piano.

Michael Gray, Brentwood Weekly News

It is lovely to see such strong support for this pantomime; the audience were ready to join in as soon as the show started. This does help to create the right atmosphere for a panto and Blackmore Players have a dedicated and supportive audience for all their productions.

The company worked really hard to give us a classic pantomime, with a lot of audience participation and many archetypal panto ‘gags’ along the way. I have to say that I found the script rather disjointed, it didn’t flow as well as I would have liked, but this is not the company’s fault, they did well with the material they had to work with. I did like to references to Robin Hood in the script, especially linking it with last year’s panto, a point clearly appreciated by the audience.

The Principals put their hearts into their performances and it would not be fair if I excluded anyone from being mentioned in this report. Juliet Ware (Red Riding Hood) together with Charley Magee (Prince Florizel) made a good pairing and Charley brought all the accepted ‘Principal Boy’ character to the part. Charley also seemed to have most of the solo songs in the show, and she performed them well. Patrick Magee played Dame Trott well, although I feel he would have been more comfortable using his own voice. The good thing about being a panto Dame is that you don’t really have to pretend to be female; in fact it actually works well if you don’t!

I loved Linda Raymond as the vegetarian wolf; she is an excellent character actress and played the part perfectly. Sandra Trott was a great demon with the occasional nod to the irony of being a female in a traditionally male part. Keith Goody is another good character actor and his interpretation of Squire Falsehood was exactly as it should be. Martin Herford (Poppet) Rebecca Smith (Bo Peep) Thomas Hughes (Hardy) Emma Thwaite (Foolhardy) Rosemary Nelson (Fairy) Kira Beavis (Baa) and Rhys Burrell (Baa Baa) completed the Principal line up with Steve Hanning making an appearance as Father Christmas (Mystery Celebrity). The ensemble worked really hard in their various numbers and there were some lovely moments in their performances.

As I have said, I did find the script disjointed and I felt that the plot wandered quite a bit. It is really difficult to judge whether a script will work before a society commits to using it and I think that Director Lisa Matthews did the best she could.

I look forward to their next production.

Tessa Davies, NODA