Dick Whittington at Oxford Playhouse
until January 4<\/p>\n
By Jon Lewis and Hannah Lewis (aged 14)<\/p>\n
ROBIN HEMMINGS as Liam Rattagher – Oxford Playhouse Panto DICK WHITTINGTON – Photo CRAIG FULLER<\/p>\n
BRITPOP, the battle between Oasis and Blur, and Cool Britannia form the backdrop to this year\u2019s effervescent Oxford Playhouse pantomime Dick Whittington.<\/p>\n
Keeping many of the cast from last year\u2019s Sleeping Beauty, with Robin Hemmings playing the baddie for the third year running, the production fizzes with versions of Nineties hits, whilst Immy Howard\u2019s gorgeous costume design provides a constant wow factor for each of the leads and the young ensemble cast.<\/p>\n
DAISY ANN FLETCHER as Dick ‘Dot’ Whittington + Panto Young Company and Ensemble – Oxford Playhouse Pantomime DICK WHITTINGTON – Photo CRAIG FULLER<\/p>\n
Hemmings plays Liam Rattagher, a rat with global domination ambitions whose first step to dull the country\u2019s colourful diversity is to indoctrinate young people with a new, beige pop group called BoyBland. He is driven by the feud with his older, trendier brother Noel who is absent by choice. Hemmings savours Liam\u2019s nasal Mancunian accent by pronouncing meaningful words like \u2018reconciliation\u2019 with each syllable elongated and spiteful. His is an engrossing performance. Liam\u2019s sidekick is the current mayor of London Damian Allbran (Daniel Forrester) who becomes the unlikely love interest for the heroine, Dick, or Dot, Whittington (Daisy Ann Fletcher).<\/p>\n
LUCY FREDERICK as Sarah Fitzwarren – Oxford Playhouse Pantomime DICK WHITTINGTON – Photo CRAIG FULLER<\/p>\n
Dick, from Gloucester Green in Oxonford, is aided by Fairy Bowbells (the scene-stealing Elliott Wooster), who is transformed into Dick\u2019s famous cat assistant, while the London resistance to Liam comes in the comic form of the Dame, Sarah Fitzwarren (comedian Lucy Frederick, who seems ready to explode with something risqu\u00e9 but somehow restrains herself). Sarah is helped by her daughter Alice (Sophia Lewis) and her friend Albert Square (Fintan Hayeck), in trying to win a poptastic battle of musicality.<\/p>\n
Hannah writes: I enjoyed the fact that they had even the main villain with human (or as human as you could get in a rat) feeling problems, and that most people that could be called \u2018villains\u2019 may just need to be listened to and cared for.<\/p>\n
I could also feel the passion radiate the most during the songs. I felt that\u2019s when the stage truly came alive. I see talent through these actors\u2019 performances.<\/p>\n
Well done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dick Whittington at Oxford Playhouse until January 4 By Jon Lewis and Hannah Lewis (aged 14) ROBIN HEMMINGS…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":618231,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[19639,748,29404,393,4884,257,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-618230","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-arts-and-entertainment","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-divert-me","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-london","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115679161524668317","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=618230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/618231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=618230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=618230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=618230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}