Dr Ho
About the Production
It’s Bond. James Bond. But you’ve never seen him like this.
Britain’s finest, and most well-known, spy has encountered threats over the years that have endangered his life, his country and even the world, but now someone is placing Christmas itself in peril! Plucked from the night skies, Santa Claus has been kidnapped and here’s only one man who can possibly find him in time before the world’s children open their eyes on Christmas morning, and find… nothing! But will a fondness for fast cars, faster women, a particular martini and a licence to kill be enough?
Mark Taylor draws on 007’s significant rogue gallery to populate this panto with vile villains galore and their perfectly hissable henchmen. Dr Ho. Ernst Stavro Blowave. Bob-a-Job. Rosa Widdecombe. Jaws. (‘What’s Jaws?’ ‘Thank you, mine’s a pint.’) However, this time around, Bond isn’t working solo. Enter Ada Bagwash, MI5’s cleaner. Is she really what she appears? Or is she a deep-cover intelligence operative with the tactical nous of a bagful of generals and the combat potential of a Gorilla with a machine gun? Sad to say, she’s just a cleaner, but what she lacks in intelligence… let’s just leave it there. Throw in a casino, an atomic reactor and a couple of women with unlikely and sexually provocative names, not to mention the all-singing Bondettes and their backing band, and you have a pantomime to live and let die for.
Mission briefing over, report to Q Branch to pick up your tickets now.
The Cast
Behind the Scenes
Image Gallery
The Reviews
Four stars awarded
The programme says that Theatre Workshop Coulsdon Festively Presents’, and so they do with their spoof on the ‘James Bond saves the World’ sagas, though in this case it is to save Father Christmas.
This group are good with gadgets and the opening, showing a spaceship devouring Santa’s sledge, draws a well-merited round of applause. I know the idea of rescuing the red-clad old codger is not new, but it is probably the first time that Bond has been involved. The jokes are excellent, but I can’t quote any as the show is still running. In addition, there are some new set pieces. I particularly like the translation episode where Chinese, German and Russian are involved and the denouement at the end is quite unexpected.
Mark Taylor is a pretty talented fellow, because not only does he write and direct the piece, he is also the music director who plays a mean combined piano and keyboard. Neil Grew is an impeccable Bond who gives us the occasional phrase in a magnificent Sean Connery accent. he cleverly does not overdo it and is only once upstaged and this was by a five year old girl in the audience. “Where did they go?” Bond cries. “The bad lady took her off that way!” she says, in the authoritative voice of a future leading lady. The Bondettes, Kimberley Argles and Tanya Allison, are musical sophisticates who can belt out the well-known numbers that keep us unshaken but stirred. Ada Bagwash (Chris Blakeney) looks quite glamorous after her promotion to ‘Blond Bond Moll’ and I am sad that they have cut out her bikini wearing scene. The homely north country accent from somewhere in the Pennines suits her prosaic character, and though we are encouraged to say ‘rubbish’ when judging her performance, we don’t mean it.
The villains are Dr Ho (Richard Lloyd) and Ernst Stavro Blowave (Bruce Montgomery). The former is the usual impassive epitome of villainy, saved only by a devotion and expertise in the history of lettuce; whilst the latter is addicted to cats and sounds like “We have ways of making you talk” from ‘Allo, Allo’. Chris Argles is an aged Agent 001. Well, you would be, if, as the number suggests, you were there from the beginning. I like his bifocals, though they look more like sixfocals. Lisa Lloyd is an attractive Miss Moony-Botty, and I didn’t know whether to fall in love with her or Kitty Amour (Heidi Bush). They both fancy Bond anyway.
I must confess to being perturbed when a fellow journalist from The Croydon Advertiser, also purporting to be reviewing this piece, is shot and killed after his notebook is found to contain derogatory remarks about the play. I hastily concealed my own. Whatever happened to the freedom of the press?
Peter Steptoe for The Croydon Advertiser, Friday December 17, 2004
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