The Pantaloons Archives - North West End UK

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Speke Hall

20Aug

By Mark DavorenNo Comments

North West

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Speke Hall

In 1865 Lewis Carroll penned Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, followed six years later by its sequel, Through the Looking Glass, and here tonight at Speke Hall, one hundred and fifty plus years on, The Pantaloons served up madness and mayhem with this delightfully absurd interpretation of a children’s classic. As the saying goes, less is more, and never was this so true as our troupe of four performed in the garden of this almost five hundred year old building, with the latest of their three summer productions: whilst the first will be remembered for the fox and the second for excessive airplane disruption, tonight nature and aviation combined to give us several flocks of geese in perfect complement to the anarchic nonsense unfolding before us. You would never have known that three...

6Aug

By Mark DavorenNo Comments

North West

The Comedy of Errors – Speke Hall

A Shakespearean comedy set around two rival states and two sets of mismatched twins is brought to life in this bright adaptation from Steve Purcell, who also directs, with its central theme of mistaken identity the perfect vehicle for Mark Hayward’s production to explore a number of popular theatre forms in this consistently funny farce that piles error upon error at an increasingly frantic pace. If the challenge of the doubling up of not one but two sets of twins whilst keeping the audience on-board as the only ones who know what is happening on stage wasn’t enough, throw in an open-air venue, forecasted bad weather, and plane disruption from the adjacent airport, and I had everything crossed for the much-reduced cast of four playing all of the roles. I needn’t have worried as with...

8Jul

By Mark DavorenNo Comments

North West

Emma – The Pantaloons at Speke Hall

I’m a long-time fan of The Pantaloons and so it was a pleasure to see them back performing in the beautiful grounds OF Speke Hall with four new Loons making up the party. Emma was Jane Austen's fourth novel, first published in 1815, and tells the story of Emma Woodhouse (Rachel Cumming), a rich and spoiled young woman who takes it upon herself to become a matchmaker for the society of the town of Highbury, Surrey - while looking out for someone handsome, clever, and rich for herself - and in which the many parts of friends, relations, romantic interests, and anyone else vaguely relevant to the plot are mixed up and performed in true Pantaloons-style by James Alston, Molly Cheesley, and Richard Lessen. The question is, amid all the shenanigans and social mores, can she avoid the tornado...

Bleak House: A Radio Play – The Pantaloons Go Online

14Feb

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

REVIEWS

Bleak House: A Radio Play – The Pantaloons Go Online

Charles Dickens first penned the satirical Bleak House as a 20-episode serial following which it was published as a novel in 1853. With its array of characters connected through the tale of a family waiting in vain to inherit money from a disputed fortune in the settlement of a lawsuit that has gone on for so long that no one knows what it’s about anymore, and despite criticism from the legal profession, it was eventually to influence judicial review and reform in the 1870s. Considered by many to be Dickens greatest work and the forerunner of the detective novel, given the abuse of power evident in recent times – PPE anyone? – who better than the critically acclaimed The Pantaloons to resurrect this indictment of the self-serving public life enshrined in Parliament, provincial aristocr...

11Jul

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

REVIEWS

Stay Holmes – The Pantaloons Go Online

When an outdoor theatre company celebrated for helping themselves to their audience’s picnics are forced to go online to perform it’s natural to worry about them, and not just that they may be going hungry. But never fear, when The Pantaloons are here then, as with this show, it is simply elementary: you are in for a great night. Following a brief stay in the Zoom waiting room to the lovely accompaniment of solo violin from Fiona McGarvey, we were launched in true Pantaloons fashion into seventy-five minutes of high jinks and madcap entertainment that was kindly followed by a Q&A with writer and chief Pantaloon Mark Heyward and tonight’s outstanding cast of Edward Ferrow, Kelly Griffiths, Alex Rivers, and Christopher Smart. Dynamic duo Holmes and Watson are well and truly put th...