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.