Milborne St Andrew

IF THERE’S one thing I love it’s a good panto – yes I know, I’m just a big kid at heart but then all the other people who came to the matinee of Aladdin must be big kids too!

I’m sure there were a few more adults than children in the audience.

There wasn’t a spare seat left for the performance. The Milborne Players had done it again – another successful panto, which was sold out long before the opening night.

Directed by Jon Riddle (and kindly sponsored by Loders Motor Group) the traditional panto lives on, with all the old corny jokes, larger than life characters and everyone talking in rhyme.

Enriched with plenty of good songs and some dancing, this Aladdin followed the familiar story with a few little twists to it.

The evil Abanazar (Roy Sach) was a wonderfully wicked character.

I looked along the front row to see a line of children sitting spellbound with big wide eyes when he came on.

They were soon booing and hissing at him and telling us he was mean and nasty man!

The Slave of the Ring (Caroline Nobbs) was never quite ready when summoned by her master and arrived on stage in some interesting states of attire but still managed to save the day and pull off a few magic moves!

Widow Twankey was, of course, very much larger than life.

Played by Peter Casemore in his own inimitable style and with outrageous costumes, you are never quite sure what is script and what is ad lib when he gets going.

Emma Whiting made a charming Aladdin and Gren Elphinstone-Davis played the loveable fool Wishee Washee with great humour.

Jo South and Sally Potter were Daz and Ariel – the glamorous blond bombshell laundry maids supposedly helping Widow Twankey.

Ariel certainly displayed hidden talents when she performed a perfect headstand in one scene!

No panto is complete without the hero finding his true love and for Aladdin it was the Princess Baldroubador (Alice Brock) daughter of the Emperor of China (Bill Preston.) Mrs Wok (Maureen Lock) added to the fun as Widow Twankey’s neighbour and of course the awesome Genie of the Lamp (Brian Parkinson) was suitably impressive. A large chorus of local children sang and danced, Ben and Sam Sach made a great job of being ‘Mustaphacarrot’ the donkey!

All in all it was a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon, with some really good laughs. Of course there is a huge list of people who were beavering away in the background making it all happen and they are far too many to mention here but may I just say thank you to them all – without them it would never happen, and we would not have had such an entertaining afternoon.

The Milborne Players can now have a well deserved rest … well for a few weeks at least until rehearsals start for their next production in early July.