Paignton Pantomime Productions

WAS there some fun for everyone? Oh yes, there was! Pantomime season opened with the extravagant production of Aladdin. The show, directed by Ian Douglas and produced by Paignton Pantomime Productions, packed enough laughs and festive crowd interaction to keep the little ones entertained and amused and enough witty jokes to bring a smile to the adults' faces.

For an amateur production, it was quite grand and the costumes and decor were as garish as you would expect them to be for a panto without being tacky and cheap. The cast, led by stage and panto favourite Steve Gale as Aladdin and Carly Watts as Princess Mandarin, worked hard to keep the full house at Paignton Palace Theatre entertained and lived up to panto expectations. You could see a lot of work was put into the two and a half hour production.

As my first English pantomime, I was kept amused maybe not for the right reasons though.Seeing the children scream and boo their heads off when bad guy Abanazer, played by Colin Gilderthorp, enter the stage was quite funny. They might be too young to get the jokes but they certainly knew their panto classics.

Widow Twankey's antics and naughty interaction with some poor old fellow called Peter was amusing and so was seeing Mr Bye cower behind his programme to avoid being squirted with water. Seeing the stiff and slightly out of place male dancers twirl around the stage greatly amused me, while we could have done away with the Benny Hill moments but hey, it's the magic of panto.

All in all, it is a well made show, the music was well placed and the cast was great. I feared I would be horrified or bored but not at all, it turned out to be a good night all round.

Should you go and see it for yourself? Oh yes you should! The production plays until January 4.

All the ingredients for awonderful panto