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.