Cultural Dessert

Last weekend had a distinctly piratical flavour: On Saturday we were in Toddington at the TADS Theatre to see ‘The Pirate Princess’, a new pantomime by TADS member Lea Pryer – ‘Treasure Island’ combined with ‘Twelfth Night’. It was a swashbuckling performance incorporating all the standard pantomime conventions – principal boy, a dame, sing-along audience participation, slapstick cookery scene etc – but with a rather cute dragon in place of the usual pantomime horse or cow. It was lots of fun and very impressively performed. TADS regular Rachel Birks was great as Princess Aliyah – the serious, romantic centre to the story amid all the cartoon chaos. But what really set ‘The Pirate Princess’ apart from other amateur productions was the work of professionally trained choreographer James Sygrove. He created four fantastic song and dance numbers on the tiny TADS stage, culminating in a wonderful ‘Bollywood’ finale (to AR Rahman’s ‘Yo Ho’ obviously!)