With Christmas now a distant memory, and apart from the wife and MiL’s birthdays, January has precious little to commend it. Fortunately in the Mayflower Theatre in Southampton, we have a quality theatre within reach which always has a Christmas spectacular of some sort. This year is was the Wizard of Oz starring a bunch of people most folks would actually have heard of, Russ Abbot, Gregor Fisher, Gary Wilmot and Matthew Kelly. Since it wasn’t a panto, we didn’t pack our disputative declarations (oh yes we did, oh no we didn’t) and drove to Southampton.
Now the Mayflower I am given to believe, is the largest theatre in the south of England and seats 2300 persons at one go. To enter through the doors is like going back in time to something Poirot might have minced around in. To be frank, my knowledge of architecture is somewhat limited to the ‘blimey that’s big’ school of critical appraisal, but the Mayflower was originally built in 1928 and has been restored to what my untutored eye would accept is it’s original appearance. Whether ’tis accurate or not, I think it looks jolly good and importantly, the seats are comfortable enough. Personally I would prefer more armchair-sized seating, but it wouldn’t be the biggest theatre any more if they had less seating would it.
What they have done is install rather good lighting and sound for a ‘provincial’ theatre and I was pleasantly impressed by the tornado effect near the beginning of the show. It was obviously theatre, but wasn’t the sort of teeth-clenchingly awful effort with wobble-boards which one can be subjected to, using computer graphics and projection to good effect. Past shows we have been to have been technically acceptable, but this easily topped them. Makes me think that the touring shows they stage are worth a punt as the techy side of things are up to it. Aspects of Love and Cats are upcoming, but I for some reason I don’t feel drawn to either Basil Brush in the Caribbean or Disney’s High School Musical. It’s not that I am snobbish, oh all right, it probably is, but really it’s not my bag, man.
Anyway, it was a cracking night out Grommit, made all the better by the inclusion of one of my all time favourite movie lines “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore”. I find it a useful expression although more usually abbreviated to “This ain’t Kansas Toto”, and used when life throws you what the Americans call a curve-ball, more suitably known as a Googly in this sceptred isle.