A Small Mind At The Theatre

I arrived at St Peter's Church for Looking Glass Theatre's Sleeping Beauty slightly jaded and apprehensive for my third pantomime of the season. However I always love to support this little theatre and this years show had the bonus of having a quartet of those magnificent University of Northampton students that I get great pleasure in also supporting. The four on this occasion were Matt Larsson, Tara Lawrence, Nikki Murray, Ashley Thomas Sopher and they made a quite excellent and youthful quartet and showed surprising skills in the challenging art of pantomime (no doubt very useful to have on the CV). Tara held the obvious affinity for working with children following her Flash Festival success the children's storytelling show and she has that quietly gentle style that offers no menace. Here she was once again joyful and even as a baddie in the second act remained playful. Ashley was quite a revelation as the dame of the show, playing up the part with glee and doing everyt...

It was back to the basement of the Northampton Shoe Museum for my third Flash and another storytelling performance, with added bubbles and paper bags. This was a slightly tougher deal to review as it is predominantly a childrens show and in the absence of any children at the performance I saw, it was difficult to tell how it would play out to them. Therefore for the duration of the show, us responsible adults (and quite a lot of students) regressed to our childhood and happily had paper butterflies on string wafting round our ears and shredded paper as a blizzard of snow. Our performer was Tara Lawrence, who is quite frankly the most perfect person to present a children's show. Softly spoken and playful in style, the choice to do such a show is now rather obvious in the extreme. We all happily were transported into the wonderful world of paper bags, dragons (called Kevin) and Prince Ronald, and our lead character Lizzie's trek to rescue him. The tale based on a book by Robe...