The Wykehamist
Trouble in Pantoland
The Christmas pantomime, Trouble in Pantoland, marked a number of firsts for QEII. For one, rarely has a don taken on as central a role as KF did, leading a massive ensemble cast with wicked sass from his opening fire-safety speech to his songs. Listed simply as playing‘ herself’ in the programme, KF’ s iconic performance was enhanced by his lazy but dramatic drawl, once again proving that no villain is truly complete without a lovely French accent.
For another, you would be forgiven to think that the crowd had mistaken the evening for the Junior Drama Festival. Unprecedented numbers of Junmen turned up in swarms and leagues, stealing the show with their unadulterated energy. Cheers, boos, screams of‘ OH NO HE DIDN’ T! OH YES HE DID!’ and even the occasional catcall carried the performance, supplying the cast and crew the energy they needed to battle end-of-term illness and give the performance their all.
Poor Matteo Lombardo( Coll: 2022-) found himself the primary victim of the heckling, with his extraordinarily well-cast take on the panto-baddie‘ He-Whose-Name- No-One-Can-Remember’. His flimsy— for the lack of a better word— prancing in the‘ LOOK BEHIND YOU!’ segment, as well as his genuinely impressive display of comic facial expressions, ranging from delicious wickedness to wide-eyed innocence, proves that this is the role he was born to play. Lavishing praise must also go to the makeup and costume departments— the incredible work of AML, Makeup Society and SPK— for bringing to life such a perfect caricature, complete with handlebar moustache, elongated eyebrows, swishing black cloak and even a yellow sun-hat.
Also leading the charge with exceptional physical comedy was Johnny Wyatt( C, 2021-), playing Bert Butterfingers, the downtrodden lover boy. Already cartwheeling across the stage within the first five minutes, one must marvel at how he managed falling over so many times in one night, skidding halfway across the stage in one instance and straight into the audience in another. A performance truly unhinged with comic ability, Johnny was a delight impossible not to enjoy, at one point even flinging a whole bucketful of Haribos into the crowd, flipping on switches en masse in our Freudian Junman brains.
However, most impressive of all was perhaps the cast and crew’ s handling of the very demanding role of Widow Twankey. After Poppy Clarke’ s( H, 2021-) fabulously dynamic performance on Night One, complemented by her extravagant cabaret-esque makeup, she unfortunately fell ill the next morning. Thus, with only a few hours’ notice, Eva Crouch( G, 2021-) stepped in as Twankey for both remaining shows. Despite only rehearsing for two short hours that afternoon on her own with KF and AML, she turned in an absolutely brilliant performance
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