Some­how it’s nearly Christ­mas again, and that means Circa Theatre’s annu­al pan­to­mime is back! I’ve been going every year since I moved to Wel­ling­ton, and I’ve gotta say, it’s still a fant­ast­ic and very ridicu­lous exper­i­ence.

This year it’s a wet and wild ride through The Little Mer­maid, writ­ten once again by Circa stal­warts Simon Leary and Gav­in Ruther­ford.

It’s 3021 and most of Pōneke is under­wa­ter. Taken over by mer­people – cre­ated when the Wel­ling­ton sew­er­age pipes finally burst for good and flooded Upper Hutt (or so we’re told), the remain­ing human pop­u­la­tion lives on top of the hills of Wel­ling­ton – ‘Wel­ling­ton Heights’. An end­less – though seem­ingly quite chill – forever war has been going on between the mer­people and the people of Wel­ling­ton Heights, and that is where we set our scene.

Cor­al (Nata­sha McAl­lister), a mer­maid, is fas­cin­ated by the human world, and saves the life of Lyall Bay (Jake McKay) a human man when his boat cap­sizes in the har­bour. So inter­ested she is by the land people, she is tricked into hav­ing her tail and voice taken away by her evil aunt Ber­muda (Kath­leen Burns), so she can go onto land to find Lyall. Mean­while, King Lando (Simon Leary) and the Dame, Shelly (Gav­in Ruther­ford) have reunited after 20 years apart, and are dan­cing around each oth­er, clearly madly in love. Along for the ride is Crabby (Trae Te Wiki), Cor­al’s crab assist­ant, and Shaggy (Jthan Mor­gan), King Lando’s NZSL inter­pret­er (who is a shag – like, the bird). Jthan also plays Nep­tuna, Ber­muda’s sis­ter, to a delight­fully chaot­ic effect.

Look, it’s a fab­ulous show, as it always is. In par­tic­u­lar this year I really appre­ci­ated the cho­reo­graphy, and the score, which is quite the ear­worm and has some endear­ing leit­mot­ifs sprinkled with­in. As pan­tos do, there’s a ton of songs we know well in it – I par­tic­u­larly enjoyed Kath­leen’s rendi­tion of Poker­face, and the show con­cluder fun.‘s Some Nights. 

All the per­formers are very strong and a pleas­ure to watch. Both of Jthan’s per­form­ances were truly excel­lent, and I really liked the sheer com­mit­tee­men Trae gave to Crabby, who was part crab, part puppy, and all parts very charm­ing.

A par­tic­u­larly clev­er aspect of this year’s show was that a lot of it was con­duc­ted in New Zea­l­and Sign Lan­guage, and the ‘audi­ence inter­ac­tion’ piece, where chil­dren would usu­ally go up onto stage but could­n’t due to COVID-19 restric­tions, involved us all learn­ing parts of a song in NZSL. As Cor­al loses her voice for a large por­tion of the piece, I found the use of NZSL par­tic­u­larly clev­er, and a great inclus­ive way to go about per­form­ing without dia­logue. Hav­ing per­formed por­tions of a show in NZSL before, I know how chal­len­ging it can be to sign and speak at the same time, espe­cially if you’re new to it, and all per­formers took to sign­ing with great joy and aplomb.

There’s some­thing for every­one in this year’s panto, with the usu­al innu­endo and sau­ci­ness from the Dame to some very pres­ci­ent notes about Wel­ling­ton life in oth­er moments. There was also a joke about APRA which I am cer­tain I’m the only one in the audi­ence who laughed at it – so I just wanted to men­tion that and say, hey, I feel you, and I under­stand.

Though the audi­ence was slightly smal­ler this year due to Level 2 dis­tan­cing require­ments, the room was full of joy and delight through­out, and I left the show yearn­ing for the sea. In times of such uncer­tainty it is so good to see a piece of theatre that’s full of energy and excite­ment, where evil is van­quished and every­one finds love by the final notes.

As I say every year, Circa panto greatest hits album when?

 

Tick­ets are very lim­ited for this show and it is mostly already sold out, but if there’s any left, dive in and pick them up here.