RSAMD Panto

Quite a hoot. ‘Sleeping Beauty’ was an entertaining and well-executed pantomime combining the talents of acting students and Technical Production Arts students. I thoroughly enjoyed myself (I really want to be in a pantomime now!) but I couldn’t help analysing it just a teeny weeny bit. The story of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ is inherently tricky as it involves the whole castle (so pretty much the entire cast) being put to sleep about halfway through. In this version this happened just before the end of the Act 1 and they resolved the problem by waking them up again almost as soon as the second half began. This felt rather anti-climactic and wouldn’t have been necessary if they’d just kept a few characters awake to continue the pursuit of the bad guy. It also led to a second half that was very bitty, where they almost took a complete time-out to have ‘the messy scene’ or ‘the sing-a-long’ which could have been so much more satisfying if they were actually tied in as steps towards a goal. The biggest goal that remained in the second half was for the prince and princess to get married, which wasn’t quite strong enough; and that’s another thing, they fell in love too soon. One more thing which was most noticeable in the first half was the old ‘rule of threes’. I hadn’t fully appreciated just how important this is, especially in comedy. This rule basically states that everything comes in sets of threes; the first two are the same, the third different – and in comedy usually the third results in hilarity. A problem with the writing in this panto was that everything came in threes but the third was not at all different! Sacrilege! It stuck out like a sore thumb to me, and every time there was two the same of something I was just longing for the third to be different… but it never was. Anyway, I’d better stop. I’ve just realised I’m analysing a pantomime… and that can’t be good! Clearly I need a holiday…