The North East Adult Panto was back in Newcastle for the New Year before touring the UK. This year’s pantomime focused on the story of Snow White, using the generic plot of the original fairytale, with changes to character names and fictional lands to make them more attuned to an adult panto. And instead of the usual seven dwarves, it included seven drag queens.
The story starts when the Evil Queen finds she’s no longer the fairest of them all and plans the death of Snow White to regain the title. However, Snow White escapes and stumbles across a cottage in the Woods housing the seven drag queens, which the Evil Queen banished. They make Snow White their new drag project before the Evil Queen (disguised as an old lady) sells them some apple shots, which sends them all to sleep. Thankfully, the Prince is around to ensure the spell is broken!
The show started well with a drag remix of “Ex-Wives” from Six the Musical, providing a party atmosphere to start the show. It did then, unfortunately, take a while for the drag queens (made up of two Drag Race stars, Michael Marouli and Tomara Thomas, alongside five local drag queens, Ophelia Balls, Andi Martine, Janice Dickinyourson, Brenda Labeau, and Dixie Swallows) to appear on the stage again, which felt like a missed opportunity. Still, they did appear more in the second act. The show also used music from Wicked and other popular 00s hits (from S Club 7 and Steps, for example) to get the audience going throughout the show.
The cast was overall strong. David Potts (playing Dirty David, the Queen's Underling) played an excellent villain turned hero when he began to try to save Snow White. Due to illness, Scarlett Moffatt could no longer play the Wicked Queen, but Deborah Taylor-Smith provided an excellent Evil Queen who thrived off the booing from the audience every time she stepped on stage. In Newcastle, Miss Tess Tickles also joined the show as the Magic Mirror, who looked stunning and was very funny.
The ensemble cast was brilliant, showcasing brilliant choreography throughout the various scenes. However, they often stuck out for being too good against the backdrop of the pantomime as a whole. It was nice in this pantomime to have plenty of local talent, providing opportunities for those from the North East to partake in a touring show. However, the show was overly crude and often at times crass, with some jokes being casually fatphobic or misogynistic, with most of the “adult content” being the hyper-sexualisation of characters.
There was also the feeling that what made this an adult panto was the ability to use swear words, which was overdone. The story (David Ducasse) was too long to keep the audience engaged, and the performance did not seem to connect with most of the audience.
There did appear to be some teething issues for this performance. There were issues with sound quality, particularly at times being unable to hear the drag queens when they were performing, and transitions between scenes, where a new scene had started as the cast members from the previous scene were still getting off the stage. These issues did slightly improve in Act Two, but if they were ironed out throughout the performance, it would provide a better quality to the show.
One good aspect of the transitions was the use of the projections, which worked well for this show, with its touring nature and ensured the quick transition from setting to setting without using vast amounts of set. The projections were of high quality and ensured the audience knew where they were at a given time.
Ultimately, the show was crude and chaotic, but with some tweaks, it does have the potential to improve. It was a good show for a night out with friends, but it fell flat as a piece of theatre.
★★☆☆☆ (2*)
Gifted tickets in return for an honest review
