Reviewing the Reviewer - Westend Wilma: Director's Blog 38

Me again I am afraid!

Sally our splendid Fairy Godmother Marsha, also has a gift for the gab and for marketing. She tells me that she loves it and does this job alongside her acting career. 

Sal is a "doer' and had inadvertently picked up on the fact that the West End reviewer WestEnd Wilma is indeed a local Barking gal. So with no further ado our Sal tweeted Wilma - and hey presto bless her, Wilma was down the Broadway to review a local panto.

This felt great as if you look at Wilma's website you will see she reviews far more illustrious and hugely more expensive shows than our little local panto! In fact her review of Loserville made me want to book tickets immediately. So I am really chuffed that she has given us some column inches on her excellently written website.

Anyway this is her review - http://www.westendwilma.com/cinderella-barking/ 

So departing from the normal practice of review etiquette and armed with the newly found courage of a virgin panto director I thought it might be just a bit of fun for me to critique and review the reviewer! I appreciate that this is a deviation from the norm, but hang it this whole panto thing is a deviation from the norm for me! 

You will make up your own minds, but broadly speaking it reads as a reasonably good review to me. Given that its Wilma's first panto review of 2012 I feel we got away with it generally! 

And thanks to her I suspect her invitation to the chattering classes to make their way East with the promise of cheap booze may mean we do get some folk down to Barking's Broadway Off Broadway! That may herald a first - as its usually us eastenders that treck up to the West End for a choice of many great shows! 

So thanks for this Wilma - I will tweet you to let you know how many westenders get a passport in time! 

I like Wilma's take on the East End Panto thing with the truly local feel, both in terms of the characters, such as Lascivia, the Ugly sister that she suggests just came in off the street and grabbed a wig. Hole in one! You don't know how close to the truth that is Wilma! This is Andy's first foray into damehood and he comes from Walthamstow, barely 4 miles down the road from the thronging Barking Market!  

And yes this is unashamedly an East End panto. And we are unashamedly a Barking theatre company having been based here since I started Arc with my partner (and panto writer) Clifford Oliver in 1986. So we know and love our community here in Barking and Dagenham, warts and all!  I was surprised that Wilma didn't pick up on the quintessential Barking woman embodied in dear Sal's Fairy Godmother Marsha. That's probably a longer discussion than time allows right now - but a good one to have maybe over a drink at the Spotted Dog Wilma? Maybe? I'd love to meet you in person anyway - although I have a hunch that you may not be all you seem to be!

The thing I didn't like in the review though, and appreciate that this is possibly a matter of preference and taste, and maybe a bit more time than a review can afford was the bit that talked about the received wisdom about pantos. 

That’s the thing with panto, there are usually only two results. Either it’s awful or it’s so awful it actually becomes quite good.

I entirely understand where this is coming from but I wasn't sure whether the clarity of what may have been intended to be a back handed compliment was in fact perhaps lost in translation? Or maybe I got it wrong? 

The  Twitter headline was ambigious as to whether Wilma is referring to the whole panto as "So awful it actually becomes quite good" or that the portrayal of Lascivia is so awful that it becomes quite good. I think Wilma really liked our Andy, but was she saying that the whole panto was so awful that it made it good? Not sure about that?

Forgive me now for perhaps being just a little too precious  - and remember that this is coming from my place as a virgin panto director so I might just be.... a little protective of my new baby!  But from the get go what I intended to achieve with this Cinderella was my now famous and fast becoming hackneyed phrase "A new musical woven through with the delights of a traditional panto"   

And from seeing the audience's reactions since we opened ten days ago I am gaining confidence that this is what we have achieved. Now I can hear the cries of " For goodness sake Carole, this is a panto not Shakespeare - lighten up, or at the very least go back to Checkov or directing plays about teenagers killing each other!"  And there is a salutary point here. This could be my first and last panto ever. Not least with the funding pressures we are all under going forward. But you know what, whether I am directing Checkov (which I haven't actually as yet - but it sounds highbrow enough to protect my reputation!) or plays about gangs (didn't Shakespeare write about them too?) I approach every piece of work with the same madness, intensity and passion to make it work to the best of my artistic ability to serve the piece and most importantly its audience. My Cinderella is no exception.  

In my earlier blog (37) today I deliberated at length about the relative merits of the the traditional and non-traditional approach to producing, writing and directing a new panto. Lots of it not always conscious, but all of it passionately intended. 

I love that Wilma likes Andy's performance and I could go on for ages about how we found Lasicivia, because yes and I make no bones about it, I have directed this cast as I would any cast of actors in a straight play. You the audience shouldn't be able to see the minute detail of my hand in this any more than work out the technology of the dress transformation! (Which took for ever to get right and not always 100% yet!) But suffice it to say, these wonderful musical theatre actors indulged me in my directorial process and style and I think may have even found it useful. I hope so. 

Lastly, Wilma mentions the sound drowning out some of the actors singing. You are bang on right about that and I think you were sitting down left in the auditorium? Totally agree that the sound balance is tricky there, and indeed further back too. Its been mentioned a couple of times by others and its something that we spent a further hour or so sorting yesterday with the Sound Designer. The feedback is useful  - and its a pain that the sound system installed during the original theatre refurbishment was for clubs rather than theatres. But hey ho - we will continue to try and get that balance right!
As to local lyrics to well known contemporary songs, I guess that's a matter of taste as well as traditional convention. And I am unapologetic about that choice. This panto has been conceived to go above the lowest common denominator in terms of its score and composition. I appreciate that might sound snooty- but its been part of the DNA and fabric from the outset. And for the most part I think we are happy with what we have chosen to do. That's not to say we couldn't do it even better given another chance next year!

So that's it really. And it comes by way of a big thank you to Wilma for bothering to come and visit us and for taking time to write about the show. Its meant a lot to all of us and i particular to Amy, Andy and Sally who get mentioned with such praise.

Be good to meet up with you Wilma next time you are down the High street maybe?
Thanks again, and I hope you won't now blacklist us from your future reviewing - we like it really!