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NODA North West Magazine

DICK WHITTINGTON (1996)

Macclesfield Majestic Theatre

Producer: Carol Dabbs
Musical Director: Ian Jones
Choreographers: Angela McIntyre & Carol Dabbs

On the night before one of the most hazardous snowstorms of the decade, a theatre full of people braved the elements to see the current pantomime from the M.M.T.G. It takes a good production to warm a cold audience. Author Jim Spernick's writing took some time to get off the ground. Very slowly, all the treats came at regular intervals with a lot of laughs, highlights and production numbers in a pacey Act II, enabling this pantomime to be a winner. It was a well-worked out and thought through production.

The company never neglects its older members in a pantomime by treating them as spare parts to festoon the stage. The age range here was, therefore, very wide. Yet, no group looked incongruous and the trendy teen and 20s performed some first class zippy dance sequences. The music was very current with many new Disney blockbusters in evidence for the young in the audience, with pastiches of nostalgic standards for the wrinklies. The cast was well-balanced but also adventurous with quite a few members playing successfully against type.

Michael Daws' Idle Jack was a good foil for David McGuiness' Dame Suet. Without the more admissible double-entendres, David successfully pulled off a Dame, twin-sister to Lily Savage, and must have raised a few eyebrows when buying, with Shirley Davies (Wardrobe), his wonderful costumes. Stephen Clayton sent up his part of the Sultan with charming subtlety and his song was one of the best numbers in the production. Katie Muncaster was Ferdinand the Cat. No easy part, because in this pantomime, she wasn't humanised. Katie managed all the feline movements with lovely bits of stage business during dialogue, always knowing when not to overact. Well done!

Helen England was a pretty Alice with a good singing voice opposite Carolyn Farish's confident, pleasing Dick Whittington. I liked Jenny Dixon's Fairy Rosebud. Commanding and assured, she was more like the Queen in Iolanthe. Despite giving one of the evening's best performances, beautifully spoken and excellent histrionics, it was obvious Richard Cornish's sinister King Rat stood no chance against such invincibility.

P.S. Excellent make-up!