Yesterday I went to a pantomime at the Palace Theatre in Newark. I don't have a long history with pantos. When I was five I ran out of Dick Whittington at the Dome in Brighton, never to return, when a gun was fired in a market square and I can't recall another one until I took my daughter to a Nottingham Playhouse panto and sat there wondering how anything could last so long.
So I'm not a panto fan, which disappoints me as I love variety and treasure memories of Elsie and Doris Waters, Sandy Powell, Peter Brough, Al Read, Max Wall et al. Cinderella at Newark didn't mark a Pauline conversion, but I did enjoy it.
It had a story. It had real actors who worked hard and were obviously enjoying themselves. It wasn't patronising. It wasn't full of jokes about the X Factor and Eastenders. And when a seven year old, asked by Buttons if he didn't feel he'd left it a bit late to send a letter to Santa, said it was okay because he was going to send an e mail he was generously acknowledged as having come out with the best line in the show.
There was a reason why I was there. My colleague on the Buckland project - that has just got the go ahead for 2011!!! - was the MD so I got to sit in the pit with Matt and Steve the drummer rather than amongst the hordes of screaming kids. I was able to watch the stage and the audience and I was taken by how much the kids were involved in the story, they were visibly angry at the way that the sisters treated Cinders, affronted by the injustice of it all, which gave me hope for the future generation.
Actually the best bit about the whole thing was Matt giving me a horn and allowing me to blow it during the car chase. Enormous fun. And something else for the cv, I think.
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