The PantoLoons: “Menagerie à Trois”

Posted by Gail M. Burns - November 2011

Pigs and wolves and bears, oh my! Must be Panto time!

The PantoLoons 12th annual British American Panto, Menagerie à Trois, is a melange of Golidlocks and the Three Bears, The Three Little Pigs, with a soupçon of Romeo and Juliet and its 20th century clone, West Side Story, thrown in. Its an all-new cross-species love story by Judy Staber and the Loons, with Mother Nature (musical director Paul Leyden) presiding at the piano, and its FABULOUS!

Of course, I never met a Panto I didn’t like, but this year’s edition is the best yet musically. Most of the cast can really sing, and they have selected songs to spoof which fit their vocal ranges and personalities. The lyrics are very clever, and it is nice to see that long-time Loon Ron Harrington, sadly missing from the stage this year, has had a hand in creating them.

Joanne Maurer has also outdone herself in the costume department, with the bears and pigs decked out to ursine and porcine perfection. Maurer herself plays Fryer Duck (you can’t have a Romeo and Juliet spoof without a kindly man of the cloth to mix up the lovers’ messages, you know), with a splendid waddle on webbed feet and tail-feathers protruding from the rear of her monk’s robe. Walter Bauer as Wolf Bilkser aka The Big Bad Wolf is nattily turned out in dove-gray top hat and tails – that would be three tails, two on the suit coat and one on his butt. Believe it or not Goldilocks (Mark “Monk” Schane-Lydon), the lone human character in the show, is positively restrained in her attire, sporting a simple frock in buttercup yellow and a demure pair of black mary-janes.

Quick Introduction for Panto Virgins: The British Pantomime or Panto tradition has nothing to do with what Americans know as Pantomime or Mime. There is a LOT of talking and singing and no one wears white-face or a beret. The best analogy for Baby-Boomers is to imagine the Fractured Fairy Tales segment from the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon show live on stage, set to music, with everyone in drag. There is a lot of topical political and cultural humor, and the songs are all new lyrics set to old standards. Its all very, very silly.

With the two menageries on stage and a star-crossed lovers theme, you can bet your boots that a pig and a bear will fall in love. And sure enough, its love at first sight for Wilbur Weiner (Sally McCarthy) and Honey Bear (Tom Detwiler) while their families – Wilbur’s brothers, the bombastic Oscar (Cathy Lee-Visscher) and the shy and stuttering Porky (Johnna Murray); and Honey’s parents Mama Bear (Paul Murphy) and Papa Bear (Judy Staber) – prepare to rumble like the Sharks and the Jets over who destroyed Oscar hydrofracking equipment.

Will Wilbur and Honey run away to Greece with the foreclosure pay-out from the Wolf and live happily ever after trying to figure out what species their off-spring are? Will Fryer Duck remember the directions to the lovers’ tryst? Will Oscar hydrofrack the farm? Will Goldilocks, a woman of very particular charms, ever find a mate, and if so, what species will he be? And what will happen if Papa Bear’s black-sheep (or is that black bear?) Italian cousin, Bongo-Bongo Bearlisconi, crashes the wedding? As Mama Bear would say – Oy Vey!

(These are Jewish bears, by the way. They just spent a pile on Honey’s Bear Mitzvah, so you can imagine how humiliating having their daughter elope with a non-Kosher animal is!)

Everyone is just sublime but rising to the very top of the heap are the three Weiner Brothers, who harmonize better than the Andrews Sisters and sparkle in their solos as well. Lee-Visscher, whose blonde good looks often see her cast in “girlie” roles, channels her inner male chauvinist pig as the right-wing environmentally incorrect Oscar, whose mayoral campaign song is a riff on All That Jazz from Chicago called All That Swill. Murray is perfection as Porky masters his stutter, takes a stand, and uses his foreclosure pay-out from the Wolf (who, if you recall, was the one who huffed and puffed and blew his house down in the first place) to realize his dream of going to Hollywood and making it big in cartoons. He Really Doesn’t Stutter, set to the tune of the immortal patter song from Ruddigore not only allows Murray to shine, but gives McCarthy a verse to immortalize famous stutterers through the ages.

I have been complaining for a couple of years now that McCarthy, a professional nightclub singer, hasn’t been given enough numbers to show off her bluesy belting voice. Well my prayers have been answered because she gets plenty of chances here, both solo and in the aforementioned harmony with Lee-Visscher and Murray, to impress the audience with her vocal chops (or should that be pork chops since she’s playing a pig?)

There is nothing funnier than Schane-Lydon in drag, and I was betting my boots that one of the reasons he was playing Goldilocks this year was so he could wear the same wig of golden ringlets he wore to play Little Red Riding Hood last season. But nooooo, Detwiler got the wig. Schane-Lydon got…well, I will let his Goldilocks be the hilarious surprise that it should and not give everything away.

Detwiler, who also directs, has often been shrill in various over-the-hill wicked Queen type roles in the past, is really sweet as the ingénue. He and Schane-Lydon play teen-aged BFFs really well despite their wildly different takes on what makes a girl and girl.

As always, Bill Camp has built and lit the simple set with style, with assistance from that other Loon sadly retired from the stage, Rick Rowsell.

I once took a friend to see the Panto and after the final curtain she looked at me with horror and asked “Is that you idea of good theatre?” to which I replied “No, that’s my idea of a good time.” But in truth the Panto IS good theatre. It is not classical theatre or serious theatre, but it is everything good theatre should be – entertaining, engaging, and even thought-provoking at times. Ninety intermission-less minutes just fly by. And while there is a pile of cross-dressing and some innuendo, this really is family-friendly entertainment that everyone from Great-Grandma to Kindergarteners can enjoy together. Unless, of course, you are an old stick-in-the-mud like that friend I brought along years ago. This year the FOG (Friends of Gail) occupied almost a whole row in the Ghent Playhouse, and we all enjoyed the Merry Menagerie Mayhem.

The PantoLoons’ production of Menagerie à Trois opens on November 25 and plays through December 11 at the Ghent Playhouse, 6 Town Hall Place, Ghent, NY. Performances are Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. There will be a special added performance on Saturday, November 26 at 5 p.m. Tickets for the Panto are $18, $15 for Friends of Ghent Playhouse and $10 for children under twelve years. For reservations call 518-392-6264 and complete information about The Ghent Playhouse go to www.ghentplayhouse.org

NOTE: The performance on Friday evening, December 2 is a benefit for the Child Advocacy Center of Hudson and, while it is nearly sold out, some tickets are available through them.

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