Review: Aladdin, Woodbridge


Our area is blessed with a very prolific and varied array of local am-dram companies and Woodbridge’s Company of Four is one of these.

Last summer they presented South Pacific which was a stunning performance for an am-dram company, and even rivalled many professional performances with their very talented and able cast.

Aladdin is the Company of Four’s panto offering for this year. I guess that South Pacific was going to be a hard act to follow and sadly on the opening night I feel that the company had somewhat lost their mojo.

The sets were great, the costumes breath-taking. The cast were up to their usual high standard in performance but the production appeared to be missing something.

There was much restlessness from younger audience members around me, and many of the songs seemed lost on the very young, what a shame that those responsible for choosing the numbers didn’t plump for something from Frozen or the charts rather than instead those chosen from as far back as the 60s.

The duration was overly long and this may have added to the restlessness of some audience members, 30 minutes could easily have been cut without spoiling the story.

The show did have it’s good points however and the “clog dance” does have to be seen!!! Must have take hours to choreograph and well worth it!!!

Every single one of the cast turned in great performances, worthy of mention are the Trio of Comedy Policeman, Paul Leech is a great Dame, but even Paul seemed to be struggling. Hopefully things will have tightened up throughout the run. It is still worthy of a ticket, but on this occasion this reviewer has to reluctantly confess that the company were let down by a weak script and direction.

Runs until 21st February. Co4.co.uk

Mark Keable – Ipswich24

panto