Catherine Bennett resumes the weekly look at the performing arts world, with the sad end of Jerusalem, the luck of a cabbie, and French revolt. Do you hear the people sing?
Adam Alcock reviews Nigel Kennedy playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons and his own Four Elements at York Opera House.
Catherine Bennett highlights the trends in the performing arts world today.
Jonathan Cridford reviews 'Ghosts', one of the Freshers' plays for this year.
“He’s behind you?” – Yes we really should pop that in somewhere…
The Wizard of Oz, that beautiful tale of finding yourself and finding the qualities you possess deep inside you. That or just a psychedelic ‘trip’, but personally I prefer the first synopsis. Perhaps I’m just soppy like that. Imagine my surprise upon discovering I would be playing the Pantomime villain in that very same story; albeit with slightly different characters, setting and songs. (Though I’m sure Judy Garland would have managed a glorious rendition of the Lonely Island’s “I Just Had Sex”.)
I’ll be honest; getting the thing on stage was a close call. I say stage, I mean floor as the charity event wasn’t about to pay £1000 for some staging we could really do without - the floor worked perfectly. And anyway, try dragging a beautifully dressed dame up some steps on a trolley. I know Robin is a superhero, but that’s asking too much.
So there we were, Saturday night, hidden behind the beautifully painted scenery (can you tell I helped?) while The Shambles did their thing. And we were - to say the least – rather nervous. Our dress run had gone well – always a bad omen – and we had been ‘teched’ only that morning. There was a lot of scope for something to go wrong. One plus side was the addition of chairs for the audience – those in the comfy seats have no idea how lucky they were to have them; it was very nearly cross legged on the floor for everyone. Throw-back to primary school nativity? Could have worked I suppose.
So there I stood, in my ‘evil’ black dress casually put together by my mother only the week before, waiting to make my grand entrance, hoping I wouldn’t fall off the heels made by Satan I’d decided to wear, praying the umbrellas wouldn’t break and above all desperately checking I knew all my lines. I heard the end of the previous scene leave the stage and stepped into the limelight.
The cacophony of booing and hissing was phenomenal, even if I say so myself. And never have so many boos made me so happy. I launched into my rant, paced up and down, screamed, shouted and threatened like never before. We were off, and we stormed it better than Hurricane Irene. Given, it wasn’t the high character development and well thought twists and turns of the perfect production, but let’s be honest, this is Panto not Pinter!
The audience cries of “He’s Behind You” on the appearance of the actual Wizard of Oz (an intentionally poorly disguised Ron Weasley) made our day backstage; we’d all known we’d have to get one in somewhere. And the audience actually seemed to enjoy themselves.
As I lay in bed on Monday morning – ok, Monday afternoon – still sleepy from a very late night (or should that be early morning) and looked back over the two shows in my mind, I couldn’t help but think we’d been a resounding success. We entertained, we raised a substantial sum for charity and we’d had one hell of a lot of fun doing it.
I’m a first year; I have never done Pantomime before and honestly never thought I would. I signed up on a whim with my flatmate and popped down to an audition. Apparently they saw the evil cow within and let me parade around in a black dress with pointy shoulders and black eye makeup. Testament to Pantsoc: I’m never looking back.
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