Snow White at South Mill Arts Centre

[Ad- gifted experience] As you may have guessed, it’s Panto season in England, and we have gone to a number of pantos this year! Last year, we saw a performance of Snow White at Fairfield Halls Theatre and previously we have been to the South Mill Arts Centre to see a One Many play, so we were really excited to get along for another Christmas classic. This panto actually leaned heavily on the musical side of things, which was a neat twist on the performance.

This performance of Snow White at South Mill Arts Centre had some of the traditional signs of a panto, though there was no dame, which I was very surprised about! Instead of the dame, there was a main character call Dexter, who was the narrator, made the cheeky jokes, and was a friend of Snow White herself. I do not feel the show, over all, was lacking a dame – and we could still boo and shout at the villain, which is always a bug plus. The dwarves themselves were puppets, with the actors playing their puppets, which also was very fun to see.

The use of the stage in Snow White at South Mill Art Centre was very impressive as there were a number of foreground and background layering, along with projections that brought the story to life! When it came to the sounds of the play, there were tons of sound prompts; like sound effects in video games! There were calls that she needed to go off stage and sound effects when she thought about how much she loved the prince. This timing was fantastic and went along well with the musical feel of the show. We have not been to a pantomime that contained so much singing before, but all of the actors in Snow White were beautiful singers and their talents were highlighted well.

Despite not having a dame, there were all of the classic pantomime bits like the 12 days of Christmas song, complete with water guns, and tons of audience interaction where everyone was split into groups and encourage to be louder than others. If children waved at actors, while they were dancing, a bunch of them actually waved back while being in character – making the whole thing feel super personal! Robin found this to be particularly silly and waved at the actors several times, getting excited when they waved back at her.

Snow White is a classic tale, but Snow White at South Mill Art Centre had it’s own twist on the tale, with a story of Snow White finding an incomplete map, left by her father, that she needed to solve to find the Tree of Truth. This added a new element to the story and one we were interested in, especially as they tried to find it and the general truth of all of what was going on. We very much enjoyed watching Snow White – Kai and Amelia both joined in, despite being teenagers, and said that it was pretty good too.

You can check out our other Days Out to see what else we’ve been up too!