View from the Green Room: Waterford's Big, bad and beautiful 'Beauty and the Beast'
Waterford Panto Society's production of Beauty and the Beast at the Theatre Royal. Photo: Joe Evans
As I sit in the stalls with the excitement and noise levels of the young audience building all around me, it strikes me that Waterford Panto Society is in the business of providing top-class pantomimes for as long as I can remember. And that’s not today nor yesterday.
Panto is really a variety show with a story. But what separates panto from variety is the scale of the productions.
Panto is brilliantly theatrical. Everything about Panto is bigger. Colour and comedy, dance and drama, characters and costumes, banter and beauty are all writ large in Waterford Panto Society’s Beauty and the Beast. And don’t the young audiences just love it because this is the complete theatrical package for our young audience.
There’s no expense spared here on the show. There are more costume changes here than you’d see at a Lady Gaga concert. The costume plot from the wardrobe team of Patrice Power, Ann Corcoran Brown, Jackie Finn and Rita Drohan is a riot of technicolour and comic invention and the finale change to navy blue for the entire cast adds that final extra touch.
Jane Kennedy’s hairs and wig creations are a festive delight that have me laughing all night.
Craig Cunningham’s lighting design is perfect for a Spraoi set that keeps the show buzzing along, while Seán O'Sullivan’s sound design rocks home with noisy punches and fart-explosions that would wake a deaf man in a coma in Ballybricken.
Ali Reville adds another layer of glamour and pizzazz with her imaginative choreography. Two senior and junior choruses front the three-week long run and everyone impresses. “Be our guest” and the Act 1 Finale are real showstoppers. Dancers enter and exit with professional ease to create an impression of constant movement that not only entertains but also tells the story and the young dancers have a real scene-stealer in little George Malone who is a bundle of energy.
Local gags always bring laughs with plenty of topical references for the adults in the house. Dáil bike sheds… WLR phone-ins… Jack Molloy’s hams… Winterval… John Mullane… Apple money… the Green Room Awards. Nothing escapes the barbs from the stage – including moi trying to look inconspicuous at the back of the stalls.
The story pounds along and there’s always work on the front of the stage. Especially comedy. This is panto and subtlety would be about as welcome as a garlic milkshake at a kid’s birthday party. This is slapstick, falling over with sound-effects writ-large every time a character hits the deck. This is one-foot-on-the-piano stuff with gags milked and worked for all their worth.
The comics never work alone. A fall-guy will feed the line and then explain the tag-line if needs be. Gags are taken up and worked. A running story that builds from "a short shirt" to "the short-sleeve shirt on the short shelf in the short-sleeve shirt shop" etc. has the young audience in stitches. And me too.
Tony Corcoran’s Nanny Potter is everything you want from a Dame. Noisy and nosey Nanny lays it on factor-fifty thick. Nanny drives the show on as she minds the goodies, menaces the baddies, knocks her sidekick Chip (the excellent Brian Tuohy) over, defeats the evil Baroness Boneyparts (the loveable Brenda Giles), brings Belle and the Beast together in a romantic clinch for the ages AND still finds time to fall in love herself.
Joe Shanahan is a dashing Prince Alexander and a hard-to-please Beast. Aoife O’Connor is a delightful and feisty Belle and Paula Weldon manages to make all the young audience fall in love with her delightful Druantia of the Forest. Kieran Walsh’s Gaston could ham it up for France in ze Vanity Event in the Olympics as the preening, pouting Gaston, while poor old LaFou (Adam O’Neill) remains the butt of many of Gaston’s gags. Tobie Hickey is a mumble-dumble of scientific techno babble as the lovable eccentric master of invention.
It’s just great to hear a live band in the pit and MD Wayne Brown keeps a mean beat and a cool head. Tony Corcoran directs a well-oiled machine that plugs into a power-grid of energy, runs on talent and manufactures a tip-top night’s entertainment.
Waterford Panto never leaves Waterford down and we all love it.
OH YES WE DO!
