For one, there was a big title screen with lots of glitter and pink. That was almost expected. During the overture, there was a whole light show that went on featuring just this title screen, and then it was lifted into the wings and we never say it again. Yes!
What proceeded was an odd retelling of the tale of Cinderella, set in what I now understand as a pantomime set - neoclassical procenium (I think there's a term for it) with nested flats (which we didn't get to see change, those bastards) and a back drop, and everything was SUPER cartoony. Prince Charming's steward comes on bearing invitations to the ball, but she's a girl. Moreso, she's a black girl who can belt, but playing a man, but she had no pants. I mean she had a little hanging thing that draped her unmentionables, and some dance shorts, but she was wearing tights and heels. But she was a guy. I get that there's cross dressing in pantos, but this wasn't nearly enough. They were, for all intents and purposes, women who were refered to as men. I found it odd.
Then the Prince comes out - ALSO a woman. And they talk some more and then the Stewart goes to Cinderella's house.
At Cinderella's house, we meet Buttons, seen here in poor resolution ("poor resolution" is the ultimate fate of this panto). This is the only picture I could find of the production, but thankfully it has Buttons. Buttons, as it turns out, is the Scottish servant of Baron whatever his name is, also featured in the picture, who is Cinderella's dad, and he has a huge crush on Cinderella. He's also the protagonist, because while the whole Cinderella-Prince Charming thing happens, he's trying to work up the nerve to tell Cinderella that he loves her and ask her out on a date. I actually think he does it at some point, but the song gets interupted by the Fairy Godmother, so though something should come of it, nothing does. Also featured in this picture is Dumpling, a horse, who Buttons has been assigned to train, and who at one point wears makeup. While Buttons teaches the audience a song to cover the final set change, we learn that, in fact:
Dumpling likes his cornflakes.
Dumpling likes his hay.
[something something something something]
to get his five-a-day.
He can eat a carrot.
Parsnips are okay.
But give him some hay
And then he'll go NEIGH.
"NEIGH" must be read with flapping jowls as you shake your head back and forth, just so you know.
So, the central conflict is Buttons trying to ask Cinderella out, which is actually great, because Buttons is lovable, makes terrible puns, and finds most things incredibly funny - to the point where the actor's voice is hoarse by the end of the play. So there's a lot of the two annoying sisters, played by men, running around and making sexual advances despite the fact that they are, obviously, ugly and men. (Oh yes they are!)
That's another thing, the call and response. Many Americans don't know this, but in a pantomime there are specific audience cues for call and response. "Oh no isn't" or any conjugation thereof is one of them. "Oh no they aren't." Audience: "Oh yes they are!" If you get into it, it works to great effect.
Five stories are born from this panto: first, pantomimes, living up to their name ("imitating everything") rip off and plagiarize songs like nobodies business. This show borrowed heavily from bands like The Sweet (Ballroom Blitz) and The Scissor Sisters (I Don't Feel Like Dancin), and musicals such as Grease and Into the Woods. Specifically, they STOLE part of "You Are Not Alone" from Into the Woods, and actually tried to play it as serious, and I sat, appalled, pointing an accusing finger at the stage. But they do this for a reason, and that is, that whoever wrote this pantomime either a) isn't that good at writing music, or b) is so good at writing appropriately bad music that we don't know whether it's serious or not. The love song between the Prince and Cinderella goes like this:
"I'm looking at him
Looking at me
Looking at me
Looking at him..."
And we, the obnoxious foreigners in the back row, were the only ones cracking up because we didn't know whether it was supposed to be funny or not.
Second: Buttons, the two bad sisters, and Dumping are all in a scary woods to cover a set change, and Dumpling, who only speaks in whispers, says, through Buttons, that he wants to sing Zippidy Do Dah with everyone, complete with motions (apparently there are motions to Zippidy Do Dah), because Dumpling can't sing. "Why can't he sing?" someone asks. Buttons responds, "he's a little hoarse."
The whole audience groaned, particularly me, but I did it out of vast appreciation for the sheer awfulness of that pun, and I started a slow clap. More so, this slow clap spread to all out applause, and it actually took the actors by surprise. Or at least this is the story how I tell it, and how Ken who was sitting next to me tell it. I wonder sometimes whether I was the only slow clapper, but you know what it's my birthday, so I say I am.
Third: During the Dumpling song, Buttons called all the kids onstage to sing it. All of us K'Nexers, far too old to join them, immediately looked to Avery Baldwin, Wendy's youngest kid, and urged him to get onstage. Sadly, he declined utterly, and so we didn't get to live vicariously through him, although I think most of us desperately wanted to be on that stage singing along with Buttons.
Fourth: At one point the actors went into a seemingly improvised joke that made them laugh and break character. It may have been planned. A kid in the audience yelled "get on with it!" and that kid rocked.
Fifth: At the beginning they called out people's birthdays, and I was on the edge of my seat, cause my birthday was the next day (today), but they didn't call me, thankfully.
So the poor resolution of this panto: Buttons doesn't get Cinderella in the end. In fact, Cinderella and Prince Charming go off and have a big lesbian wedding. Buttons decides to abstain from marriage and go off and train Dumpling, and it sucks.
Then, after the curtain call (final story I guess), everyone comes on dressed for a curtain call number, the stepsisters as a bottle of champagne and a cake, and they have their number and all. Then, one of the stepsisters, a community actor for a long time, came out and started giving a speech about how the Northcott Theatre, the one on the Exeter Campus, was having its funding cut and may very well get plowed under. There were petitions we were suppposed to sign.
The problem is he was dressed like a cake and taking himself entirely seriously. I couldn't help smirking.
And also I'm twenty-one now. I've been doing a lot of wistful reading of T.S. Eliot and my Greek New Testament today, and there's that line in Corinthians about "when I was a man I put down childish things." I didn't look it up in Greek, but that's kind of how I'm feeling, like I need to saddle up and ride off into the sunset. The line after it, though, I quoted for a presentation this past week. "For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then we will see face to face." In Greek, the phrase "through a glass, darkly," uses the word "ainigmati" which is translated as "darkly," but really it's the word for "riddle." It's where we get the word enigma.
And now I can't help thinking of the pantomime, the imitation of everything, and seeing things through the riddling glass. Acknowledging the illusory pervading people's perceptions is kind of acknowledging that the world as people see it is a kind of pantomime, everything imitated. Which makes life kind of fun.
This is my birthday wisdom.
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