Ad disclosure: We were provided with press tickets for the purpose of this post.
At the weekend we headed over to the Artrix, Bromsgrove, to check out their Christmas panto; Dick Whittington. Produced by Elite Pantomimes, this panto tells the story of the ambition Dick Whittington and his loyal feline companion Tommy, as they try to attain fame & fortune in London – and to get the girl, too.
We picked up our tickets from the box office, bought ourselves a drink from the bar each (they do decent coffee!), bought a programme for a very reasonable price of £3, and I also somehow found myself buying a pair of cat ears & matching collar for my youngest. They had a selection of snacks and souvenirs to choose from at a stand in the foyer area, and all at decent prices.
This was our first visit to the Artrix and I found the seating pretty comfortable. Parking was free, and the foyer area & bar are open for 90 minutes before show start times, so we had plenty of time to get a drink and then find our seats when the doors opened.
As for the show itself, it was great fun. Dick Whittington decides to head to London where ‘the streets are paved with gold’ to seek his fortune, and manages to find friendship and a job with the Alderman & his daughter Alice, Sarah the Cook & her son Idle Jack. Baddie King Rat aims to ruin his plans and take over London for himself, but never fear as Fairy Bowbells is on hand to help Dick and his faithful cat Tommy save the day.
This production has all the ingredients that makes a panto great; a ridiculous dame with more costume changes than I’d wear in a week (and getting progressively more ridiculous), a comic who is ridiculously yet endearingly daft, plenty of audience participation, double entendre, and music with lyrics rewritten to suit the story.
William Hastings is absolutely hilarious as Sarah the Cook, and my absolute favourite part of the show was my poor husband being singled out for a bit of audience participation as s/he flirted outrageously with him while James tried to melt onto the floor in embarrassment. Olive Broad was equally marvellous as the baddie King Rat, and played his role with a wonderful sense of melodrama and masterful stage presence.
The main duo of Rebecca Dyer as Dick and Michelle Roberts as Alice were both wonderful in their roles, and the whole audience seemed to be rooting for their happy ever after – though I found it a bit sad that Idle Jack claimed he wanted Alice for himself at the beginning yet didn’t seem at all bothered that she found love elsewhere!
The show was full of slapstick comedy and typical panto moments with the cast frantically running around the stage, getting chased around by a gorilla (with plenty of “it’s behind you” moments), and generally keeping the audience laughing our heads off.
A particular highlight was their version of the 12 Days of Christmas, where the main characters all explored the contents of Sarah’s ‘Amaze-on’ order full “of a little treat for me” items including bars of soap, toilet rolls, and of course a plate of whipped cream face mask that ended up gracing someone’s face at the end of the song.
This was made extra funny by not only the planned choreography of the characters rushing around to pick up and wave their props at the right moments of the song, but also the accidental and I am pretty sure not actually in the script moment of a string of “five tooooiiiilet rolls” going flying out of Sarah’s hands to land in the audience. The show and song had to be paused momentarily for them to be returned to stage, and the cast had to tackle a serious case of the giggles as they attempted to complete the number afterwards.
A small ensemble of dancers with three principal dancers and six younger dancers helped bring the story to life and did a lovely job backing up the main cast during the musical numbers. The sets were also good, especially for a smaller venue like this – fairly simple but effectively done.
The only real let down of the show was the audio – while the cast as a whole had decent voices there were one or two wobbly moments, not aided by the audio quality of the mics or mixing – I’m not sure what exactly was going on. At times the music seemed too loud in comparison to the singing, and at others the volume just seemed to be too loud overall and the quality of the audio suffered as a result. Despite this, the music was catchy and the altered lyrics of the popular tunes brought smiles to the faces of the audience.
With two acts and an interval in between, Dick Whittington was just over two hours long. After the performance, we had a chance to say hi and have a quick photo with the cast.
Dick Whittington is playing at the Artrix until Sunday 29th December, and is an ideal way to spend a few hours this Christmas break if you need a good laugh! Tickets start at £20 & can be booked on the Artrix website.
