View from the Green Room: Girl power princesses at the Premier Hall
Evie O'Brien, Rapunzel, in Portlaw Musical Society's production of Rapunzel & The League of Princesses. Photo: Joe Evans
Portlaw Panto continues to excel and draw sellout crowds to the Premier Hall where the welcome is always friendly and where everyone knows everyone else. Because this is what community is all about and Portlaw Panto carries that rainbow rim of pride in what they do.
It’s a clever move to recruit a couple of hot and in-yer-face princesses like Cinderella (Lauren Humphries) and Snow White (Alyssesa Flannery) to beef up the Rapunzel (Evie O’Brien) plot.
Together they make up a combative girl-power trio that rescue princes and their butties.
Rapunzel is one of the few pantos that has no dame but ever-popular and talented Freddy Kelly gets his beard in as narrator/character in the guise of Glimmer, the hilarious Panto Fairy who every kid in the audience would just love to bring home.
Portlaw Panto does comedy really well and everyone of the cast has their moment in the spotlight.
Chief scene-stealer has to be Dermot Sullivan as Sam the part-time Royal Aid and full-time inventor of word games and corny gags that tonight’s audience just loves. And he has the perfect straight man in Gavin Keyes’s Dandini, who works his socks off all night as a squire’s yeoman.
Alyssa Flannery has great fun with a feisty in-yer-face-boi Snow White who has a look that would terrify a hungry crocodile.
Shane Flynn is the baddie from hell as inky-black Gothel with a magnificent bass that would frighten a traffic warden.
His three dopey witches – Slugger (Stephanie Maguire), Scratchit (Niamh Doherty) and Sniff (Dervla Walsh) – are great fun as they manage to get their master’s instructions completely wrong. Their battle of wits with Sam and Dandini in a ‘Get your cards right’ is great fun and has all the kids in the audience screaming out ‘higher or lower’, although no one really knew which witch was which!
Rapunzel’s mammy and daddy bring a lot to the panto table also. Jamie Flynn is an impressive King, while Samantha Brennan Molloy delivers the stand-out number of the show with ‘The Fate of Ophelia’.
The princes are a job lot. Ivan Kiely’s dashing Prince Lance is on a mission to rescue a damsel in distress – any damsel will do – that luckily enough turns out to be Snow White, who actually manages to rescue him.
But not until after an hilarious duet with Sam on ‘’Together we’ll be ok’.
Mark Rellis’s Prince Charming is exactly what it says on the tin…charming…and he has the audience singing along to ‘I’m a believer’.
The chase scene, with a Mission Impossible link theme, is a delight as no end of shenanigans takes place.
As the chase continues, the impossible and implausible happens along the way. Keepyuppy Catherine Connolly does an interview, along with bumbling Heather Humphries, TV ads for holidays, Enoch Burke is seen loitering, Troy Parrott takes a slide and slips off the jersey and finally Pope Leo rocks it with two disco nuns. Honest to God, you wouldn’t believe it if you saw it in a panto!
Director Bill Stafford works wonders with his cast and there isn’t a weak link among them. Musical Director Eoin Jackson drives his show and Choreographer Caz Butler Kelly makes great use of the small stage and – despite using several choruses – works the space well.
Routines are fresh with big hand gestures and casts rotating throughout and all the big numbers are just that – BIG.
It’s great to see the talent of Portlaw Junior Musical Society getting an opportunity to strut their stuff and to see older talent coming through.
Portlaw Panto continues to go from strength to strength.
