A big goofy piece of crowd-pleasing nonsense for the end-of year slot, this is at the same a lot of good fun and a little bit of a monstrous elephantine empty creature of self-indulgence, depending on how you look at it. Simultaneously a spoof of panto-values and a celebration of them, while telling an old-as-the-hills tale of small-town people standing up to a big out-of-town-developer and discovering their own values while that happens, taking all this all on has meant this stretches to around two-and-a-half-hours, while probably having about half that time worth of workeable content. Admittedly this is a show that admits all its flaws as it goes, but somehow it seems some of this stuff really should have been dropped during rehearsals to give a tighter show rather than a bundle of loose-ends that only manages to be as delightful as it thinks it's being about 50% of the time.
Virginia Gay has certainly written herself a hell of a role as the weary stage-manager and person-who-actually-knows-about-pantos-but-fears-them. And in her two set pieces, one per act, she goes to town and makes them work. What comes between them, though, is a lot of loose plotting that doesn't quite distract -would-be-charming-fumbling ends up feeling a bit strained. Around her is a varied mix of performers far too often having to do the heavy-work of carrying the over-familiar plotting only occasionally getting to reach moments of transcendance (the act two performance of a familiar Tina Arena classic being one of those). There are also a few too many jokes that are going for a big audience "woo" of "we agree with the sentiment behind this joke", rather than, you know, the think a joke is meant to go for, which is "ha".
I'm being probably a little grinchy about this- there is some very good fun in here. There's also stuff that goes on way too long for too little effect and could have been trimmed in week 2 of rehearsals. I think light-entertainment deserves more care and precision than this has.
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