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Review: Robinson Crusoe performed by the Haven Players, by Roger Paine
IN THE 18th century, a lone seafarer, Alexander Selkirk, was marooned for five years on an uninhabited island in the Pacific.
Daniel Defoe turned this story into the world-renowned novel, Robinson Crusoe.
The pantomime by Alan P Frayn, even with the most stretched imagination, paid scant attention to the facts.
Except it featured a character called Robinson Crusoe and had two scenes on a tropical island.
Set in Brazil, the island of Mumbo Jumbo and Davy Jones's locker it was more Captain Pugwash meets Raiders of the Lost Ark.
This provided ample scope for all the traditional pantomime characters to make an appearance.
Many of the cast and crew were spread among half a dozen well-known Stone Cross families, including brother and sister directors, Geoff Baker and Sue Beck. Crusoe was played, as tradition demands, with thigh-slapping gusto by a girl (Michelle Moon); more gender juxtaposition too from hook-handed pirate Cut-Throat (Sue Davies); crew-woman Cross-Bones (Heather Gordon), and Friday (Annie Cowley), son of a cannibal-eaten missionary.
The maritime theme never flagged, with a tricorn-hatted ship's captain, Captain Seasalt (Michael Bale); sou'wester wearing Davy Jones (Godfrey Forder); magical Spirit of the Seas, Coral (Natalie Beams), and a wing-flapping parrot, Poll (Daphne Fox).
Choreographer Mo Munday led the sailor's hornpipe, and tribal dancing round the cookpot of witch doctor Hocus-Pocus (Ian Spashett).
Douglas Dalziel brought a special touch of audience rapport to his pantomime-dame role of Margarita Jucilita, and Jason Clarke, standing-in at short notice for popular trouper Nick Moon, did likewise as her son, Nutty Nick. Their scene together, swaying and falling about in the galley to simulate the ship's movement, was a comic gem.
With musical direction by Michael Johnson, the Haven Players, by extracting every smidgen of humour out of a witty script, combined gleefully to produce another sparkling and innovative panto.
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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