Review of The Night Before Christmas, performed by University Of Northampton BA Actors at Maidwell Hall (Avenue Campus), Northampton
Following the prim and proper telling of Cinderella performed by the latest batch of third years in front of a theatre of under tens the day before, the next day we were hit with Anthony Neilson's very different The Night Before Christmas . Dispensing of Cinderella's Mutt and Jeff, we found ourselves witnessing e(l)ffing and jeffing as this adult panto was performed by a quartet of students. This was my first experience of an adult panto, also here described as an anti-panto, with good reason. Between the added swearing, this short and snappy play, barely thirty minutes, attempts to destroy any spirit of Christmas, even going as far as to suggest that the "spirit" is actually a drug peddled by Father Christmas and his army of Elf helpers, cocaine-like spirit in fact, where perhaps even the elves shoot up for the buzz. As this play opens, we are in a shady, dodgy warehouse, full of potentially illicit goods (which also conveniently provides many of the local con...