I went to a pantomime the other day in the Lyric Theatre. It was a play called ‘Dick Whittington and his cat’. I’d never been to an English panto before. I was told that it is a child play that involves the actors interacting with the audience, mostly making them yell about stuff like ‘He’s behind you, he’s behind you’ when the bad guy is sneaking on the good guy etc.
Dick Whittington
I was honestly prepared for the worst. I feared that the play would be for 3 year olds with not many actors on stage, very silly songs, bad costumes, boring and predictable plot and annoying children in the audience. I was thankfully mistaken. The plot was a bit predictable but that was not really bad. The acts were really nicely directed. The choreography was interesting and the actors had rally nice voices. The songs were remakes of modern day songs giving the play a nice touch. For example ‘Bad Romance’ was transformed to ‘Bad Rodents’ sang by the Rat King.
Sarah the cook
I was amazed that the play was so long, lasting for a little bit more than 2 hours. I also liked the ‘booing’ and ‘yelling’ from the audience that was encouraged by the actors during the play and not done just by the kids. Parents were happily involved as well, pointing, booing, laughing, yelling and everything. I was a bit surprised since the English are stereotypically regarded to be quite proper and reserved all the time and you can’t say that yelling in a theatre is proper behaviour.
Overall, I had a great time. I went to see the play with colleagues and we did laugh a lot. We left the play happily chatting about it. I am not sure if I’ll become a frequent panto goer but I enjoyed the experience…
(Gossips: The main character who played Dick, Steven Webb is a good actor but not really an amazing singer. I googled him to find out more about him and it turns out that he's Stephen Fry's new boyfriend! That does explain some stuff and why Stephen Fry's voice is heard during the play as well. Needles to say that Dick's 26 years old and Fry's 52. I am not saying anything, I am just gossiping...)
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On another happy note, I was very pleased to find out that the new release of the ‘Elder Scrolls’ has been announced and it will happen at the 11th of November 2011! It will be called Skyrim! For those of you not familiar with it, the ‘Elder Scrolls’ is a series of computer Role Playing Games. I am a huge fan of the series and I have finished the previous two (as much as possible).
Teaser:
Steven Webb is a great actor and cute too!
ReplyDeleteI mentioned him in this blog posting a while ago..
http://thestateofthenationuk.blogspot.com/2009/12/public-property.html
I'm glad you had a great time at the play. English Panto sounds very fun to me. I've never seen or heard of such a thing, but I don't get out much :-)
ReplyDeleteThis show sounds like it made up for that "freak circus" you attended a few weeks ago, haha!
ReplyDeleteIt's a huge tradition. I tried to describe to Xfe what it was about, but it was easier to take him - and he loved it (last year Hackney Empire), and we will be seeing this year's offering soon.
ReplyDeleteahoj
Sounds AWESOME! I'm going to a Panto tomorrow evening, so looking forward to that :)
ReplyDelete@Stephen Chapman Yes, he is a really good actor. I agree. He's not my type but I can see why he's considered cute...
ReplyDelete@Cubby I didn't know much about it either. It's quite fun though
@Bobby My thoughts exactly. :-)
@MadeInScotland The 'Jack and the Beanstalk' you saw sounds interesting as well.
ReplyDelete@wozzel have fun!
The stereotype of the reserved and proper Englishman must have taken something of a bashing since you came to live in the UK, I imagine? The British can be terribly loud and boorish. Many people I knew in Greece seemed to get their images of the British from 1950s war films, David Niven and all that. I once got hoots of derision when I pointed out to a group of Greeks that Greece is a profoundly conservative society, and in some ways more formal than Britain. Despite the reaction, I still think that's true.
ReplyDelete@Vilges_Suola I am not going to argue with that. Greek society is very conservative and more private that people think. You might have heard the saying about what's being discussed in private can never been allowed to go public (Τα εν οίκω μη εν δήμω). People are secretive and can be quite judgemental.
ReplyDeleteYes, my picture of the English people has changed drastically since I've arrived.