CHILDREN’S THEATRE: Pat Sidley
PLATFORM shoes are hazardous to the health at the best of times, and Janice Honeyman’s Aladdin (in China) proved the point one evening last week, when the empress fell off hers during a dance sequence. The mishap resulted in some ad libbing — and presumably a sore ankle.
It was the only glitch in Pact’s performance — which succeeded in entertaining most of the full house at the Alexander Theatre in Johannesburg — but not the only problem.
The worst of these, particularly for very young children, was length: the evening continued for close on three hours. This meant there were occasional patches between funny segments where you got an uncomfortable feeling of being locked up in a dark place with people shouting at you.
The production is classic pantomime — a saving grace as the trend in the brithplace of pantomime, the United Kingdom, is towards becoming more politically correct and less funny.
The costumes were beautiful, and visually the staging of the show worked well. Whenever one focused on the stage — and not on the one-liners — the scenery and actors all looked well placed. The music was very good — Honeyman and her director, James Borthwick, made good use of other people’s songs. Sting’s An Englishman in New York became An Englishman in Peking.
Some of the performances were a knock-out. Huey Louw’s magician, Abanazar, was wonderfully funny; he also survived some classy heckling from a child with a particularly good mind. Louw had some great lines to add to his performance, including a response to the first appearance of the black genie (Siyabonga Twala): “Isn’t he supposed to be blue?” Very South African, that one. He stole the show for me.
Andre-Jacques van der Merwe played Aladdin’s mother, the Widow Twankey; she and her half-witted son, Wishee Washee, played by Jose Vaz, formed a fine duo. The Widow has her finest hour in a disgustingly funny belly dance — Van der Merwe is no light weight in any sense of the word.
Anybody following South African terminology will have fun with the two pith-helmeted “palace police”, Lo-slung and Hi-flung, played by Jan Stoop and Sello Dlamini respectively. Carrying oversized quirts labelled “No 5 Commissioner Street”, they referred to themselves as “friendly boere” who “serve and protect”. Pity they weren’t around when the police were really asking for some humourous digs.
Honeyman placed in her pantomime, for little reason other than children’s pleasure and adults’ fun, two dragons, one of which said in a distinctly stoned tone of voice that he was “a deeply depressed UCT graduate dragon, ek s”, and referred to the other, smaller one as a “vertically- challenged dragonette”.
One of the finer bits of comic acting was delivered by Emperor Wun Num Bum — Peter Holden’s movements, timing and innate funniness would have worked without all the amusing lines. Some performances didn’t work quite as well, but the kids won’t notice.
Despite its length, Aladdin was largely fun. The six-year- old and seven-year-old with me enjoyed it more than I did, until the younger of the two had to take a nap towards the end.
A warning to those who don’t understand pantomime: unless you read the programme notes, the event will seem even more absurd than children’s theatre usually does. Why is the male lead a woman? Why is her mother a man? Why does a bear pitch up in the script?
For this critic, Aladdin didn’t work as well as it did for many of the other adults in the audience, who seemed to enjoy it immensely — but then, I’ve never been big on nodding my head, touching my toes, standing up and sitting down on demand.
Aladdin runs at the Alexander Theatre until January 14