Panto Bliss

Hi everyone.

A couple of weekends ago, we were invited by Wilson and the Scottish exchange teachers, the same people who arranged for our Pentland Hills walk, to attend Edinburgh's annual pantomime, "Aladdin" at the King's Theatre.  Now, I have to admit that, while I know that pantomimes are a tradition in the UK at Christmas time, my biased opinion was that they are somewhat silly, juvenile and aimed at kids.  Well, yes, it turns out that they can be silly and juvenile, but in a very enjoyable way, and I am pleased to report that we adults probably enjoyed it as much if not more than the kids.  The humour can be, at times, quite adult, without crossing a line, and certainly topical.  Fortunately, we have been here long enough to know most of the local references to both places and polititions, so we weren't left scratching our heads.

The cast was great and, if you don't know, the female lead is traditionally played by a man.  There is the leading lady, a buffoon, and a resident bad guy, who all the kids get to hiss and boo and exchange shouts of, "Oh, no you won't," to his, "Oh, yes I will!"  Ok, maybe some adults joined in this exchange.  Just saying.  There were a couple of set pieces, one involving a shirt and just how close you could get to saying something that may sound like "shirt" without actually saying it, and my personal favourite, the 4 main lead adults doing a song about if they were not in pantomime, what they might be doing.  This involved very tricky wordplay and some incredibly well timed slapstick which had us almost weeping with laughter.  Having a quite bearish man in a tutu didn't hurt either!

After the show, we went to a cafe which is attached to a movie theater and had drinks and some chat.  One of our group, who we had unfortunately not met up until that evening, was a teacher from Australia who is heading back in a few days from now, as she is finishing up her exchange.  She is a lovely lady and we hope she enjoys her incredibly long trip back to Australia.

A big thank you to Wilson, the master arranger of these events, for a wonderful evening.

The poster from the show.

The fabulous King's Theatre.  It was opened in 1904 and features all the ornamentation inside that you might expect.  We were surprised at how "vertical" the space is - the rows of seats stack up pretty steeply, so you look down at the stage quite a bit.  Very pleased to have seen the inside of this wonderful old building.  (Photo taken today, not the evening of the show)

Just to give you an idea of the craftsmanship of this theatre, these are the incredible front doors.  Lovely.