The Christmas Cavalier
About the Production
The Witchfinder-General, Roundheads and Cavaliers in a festive panto of Olde England!
From 1642 to 1651, there was a war between the King and his Parliament. Parliament won the war, and King Charles lost his head…
Set in the time when the puritan Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell, ruled England, this lively and magical panto opens with the arrival of dastardly Witchfinder-General Nicholas Grimnasty in a local village, intent on suppressing frivolous and ungodly Christmas festivities – and rooting out a few witches at the same time!
Grimnasty and his gormless Roundhead sidekicks, Matthew Smallpiece and the Stupid brothers, soon tangle with the outrageous Dame Dumplings, driving force behind the village Christmas party! Unfortunately, it’s not long before Dame Dumplings’ lovely niece Emma Sweetly has fallen foul of the wicked Witchfinder, and is thrown into Grimnasty’s grisly dungeon.
But the Witchfinder-General’s villainy comes to an extremely sticky end, after his efforts to spoil Christmas are thwarted by an unlikely alliance of Sir Daniel Dash, a bold and gallant cavalier, a dancing bear named Bottom, and three real witches, who could almost have wandered in from a certain blasted Scottish heath…
A brisk yet enchanting pantomime, offering a traditional festive flavour of Olde England, but played out before a very appealing and colourful new historical backdrop, with lots of excellent opportunities for most attractive costumes and settings.
The Cast
Behind the Scenes
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The Reviews
Witches in pantoland!
It was refreshing to find Coulsdon Theatre Workshop coming up with a really original, yet apt, subject for their yuletide show this year. Richard Lloyd based his script for this novel pantomime “The Christmas Cavalier” on the days of yore in England, when the Cromwellians banned celebrating Christmas and when eccentric old women were persecuted as witches. It was a general idea that could have taken even more development, but it certainly made for novelty to have a Roundhead Witchfinder General in lieu of demon king and a fugitive Cavalier as principal boy.
As to the suspect witch, she was none other than the sprightly Dame Dumplings. True there were three other weirder “wise-women,” with assorted peculiar noses, cavorting on a blasted heath “near the village of Coulsdon”! As these strongly spelled out (sorry) characters, Wendy Cole, Lesley Argles and Christine Blake contributed some first rate coarse acting in a show that was otherwise decidedly rough and ready in its comedy skills. A company that claims to be a theatre workshop should pay more attention to timing, line-pointing and so on. For example, the exchanges here between the supposed 17th century equivalent of panto’s Brokers Men, the two thick Roundhead soldiers, were uncomfortably stilted in their stage technique.
Most popular with the children in the audience was the dancing bear (Pete Gregory). His name conveniently being Bottom, there were plenty of amiably awful jokes, with lines like “Have you seen my Bottom” as well as misunderstandings about dancing bare.
Chris Argles was a likeable ginger-wigged Dame who needed a bit more comic invention. As the cavalier hero Daniel Dash, Penny Simeone, though promising, needed greater panache to live up to his/her name. It was Lisa King as Dumpling’s niece who gave the most relaxed performance, especially in the comic dungeon scene. Her tormentor, the nasty witchfinder, was robustly and jocularly “hammed up” by Mike Brown. His last-minute transformation into the pantomime fairy was a genuinely funny surprise.
The songs were lively (the witches again scoring a hit with the West Side Story parody “I feel ugly”). Mark Taylor and Kevin Gibbons on piano and drums were a plus.
Gwendoline Pearson for The Croydon Advertiser
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