Cir­ca The­atre’s Christ­mas pan­tomime this year is Puss in Boots. It’s a tale as old as time, if that tale were set in the wilds of Te Aro and Karori and fea­tured many dick jokes, jabs at Gareth Mor­gan and fan­tas­ti­cal dance num­bers.

It’s 2018. Or there abouts. Camil­la Miller — a griev­ing wid­ow woman — and her son Arthur Miller (yes, I know) have just dis­cov­ered that they’re out of mon­ey. Their mill has run dry and the man of the house has run off to the for­est to find him­self. What are they to do? Well, Camil­la insists that Arthur must find a wife — who comes in the form of Martha, the daugh­ter of King Justin (yes, that Justin) who vehe­ment­ly does­n’t want to get mar­ried. Many hi-jinks hap­pen, there is a sig­nif­i­cant amount of caper­ing, and the Puss (in Boots) turns up to save the day.

It is all very fun.

Obvi­ous­ly, it is a pan­to, so there are a lot of chil­dren about — and there even is a moment where the kids get to go up on stage and play around with­in one of the scenes — so you might want to give this one a miss if that’s not quite your style. How­ev­er, I was­n’t at all bored and found a lot of fun with­in the show — espe­cial­ly with­in the raunchy jokes that the kids would­n’t quite have got­ten. There was a fan­tas­tic moment that felt fair­ly off the cuff involv­ing a cucum­ber and two Pak ‘n’ Save reusable bags, but I’ll leave that up to your imag­i­na­tion.

The cast per­form a vari­ety of dance and song num­bers across the entire show. There was, of course, the old pan­to favourite — Bil­ly Joel’s Uptown Girl per­formed by our lead­ing man in the process of woo­ing his inevitable love (Arthur, to Martha) — plus a hand­ful of new and unique pieces. I par­tic­u­lar­ly enjoyed a ver­sion of Anna Kendrick­’s Cups (When I’m Gone) per­formed by the King and Martha, with some very tricky chore­og­ra­phy and many cup-based skills.

Also, don’t get me start­ed on the chore­og­ra­phy! The whole show was chore­o­graphed excel­lent­ly, with some very strong dancers and singers. Ben Emer­son had incred­i­ble stage pres­ence as Arthur, and Car­rie Green delight­ed with her incred­i­ble voice as one of the trolls (the antag­o­nists). Jonathan Mor­gan had an hilar­i­ous and very sassy take on the Puss, and The Dame (Gavin Ruther­ford) had an easy rap­port with the audi­ence and tru­ly made the piece what it was.

It was very wel­come to see such a strong cast over­all, though.

Puss in Boots is fun for the whole fam­i­ly, and is absolute­ly worth see­ing. It’s enjoy­able for both the child and the child-at-heart.

(I’ll be com­plete­ly hon­est, though, I did­n’t expect quite so much Fort­nite danc­ing in a pan­tomime, but times have obvi­ous­ly changed. It was cer­tain­ly a unique take, that’s for sure!)

 

Puss in Boots is on now until the 23rd of Decem­ber 2018 at Cir­ca The­atre in Welling­ton. Tick­ets are avail­able from Cir­ca’s web­site.