On Thursday 10th April, 2025, me, my boyfriend Aaron and friends Robyn, Joanne, Sophia, Lou, Emma and her teenage son Lucas attended Cast in Doncaster to see the spectacular Easter pantomime, ‘Pinocchio’

The storyline to this production is centred on a naughty puppet, Pinocchio (Ryan Greaves), who appears to have no morals, and partakes in frowned upon endeavours such as truanting from school. He will only become a ‘real boy’, if he proves himself brave, selfless and true

Greaves is a regular to Cast theatre, appearing in every Anton Benson Productions (ABP) Easter pantomime; ‘Beauty and the Beast’, ‘Wizard of Oz’, ‘Rapunzel’ and ‘Robin Hood’. He co-wrote and directed ‘Pinocchio’! He has a first class degree in acting from Manchester Met School of Theatre and is absolutely hilarious! 😂

Phylip Harries is also extremely funny, the pantomime Dame, who has performed in countless pantomimes throughout the years, and even nominated in 2023 and 2024 for the prestigious Best Dame award at the Pantomime Awards

The malicious baddie this Easter was the well known versatile celebrity Bobby Davro as the sinister Italian Stromboli! This was Bobby’s 48th pantomime, however it is only the first time he has played a villain.

SPOILER ALERT: Stromboli forces Princess Tik-Tok (Kate Salmon), a doll wound by a key, to pretend to be in love with Pinocchio as to convince Pinocchio to be a part of Stromboli’s devious, greedy, money ridden schemes of stardom.

Kate studied at the Royal Central School of Speech Drama, graduating with a distinction Masters, and is an Associate Director for Anton Benson Productions (ABP). She is immensely talented

The Blue Fairy was played by Amanda Henderson in the panto we saw (a fan favourite, playing the lovely staff nurse Robyn Miller on BBC’s Casualty, for a decade). However, in the official programme it includes British media personality Katie Price in the credentials.. which may explain why there were a lot of Katie Price jokes 🤣

There was also special guest appearances from Zippy and George, characters from the popular children’s television programme Rainbow 🌈 Zippy is a five year old orange/brown puppet, with a zip for a mouth and George an eight year old pink anthropomorphic hippo [www.fandom.com]

The band consisted of Jamie Todd, a musical director and keyboard player and Jake Greville, a drummer and sound effects technician. The musical supervisor was Olivia Zacharia, the choreographer Beth Portman and the dancers were from the Allegro Theatre Dance Academy, situated in Doncaster

There were plentiful comical interludes and cheeky ‘dad jokes’, many of which teased Doncaster residents (i.e jokes about living in Doncaster). The Dame, Mama Geppetto flirted throughout with one of the poor adult male audience members! 😜

At one point, huge inflatable balls were bouncing all around the auditorium, water pistols squirting the unfortunate few at the front. There was a really funny scene assembling a table, to which it collapsed but then pretend nails were knocked with an inflatable hammer on poor Mama Geppetto’s head!

There was also an array of comical tongue twisters and rhymes, and so many innuendos which went completely over the heads of the younger audience members… words which rhymed with a ‘wonky’ donkey 🫏 🤪 and words rhyming with women names, for example, Pat and hat, Cath and bath, Pearl and swirl, Ruth and tooth, Jane and plain, Sue and blue, Annie and… 🤣🤣

With regards to musical numbers, quite a few songs came from Disney’s ‘Pinocchio’ such as ‘When You Wish Upon a Star’, ‘Hi-diddle-dee-dee’, and ‘I’ve Got No Strings’, but also others such as ‘Popular’ (Wicked) and ‘The Greatest Show’ (The Greatest Showman). Bobby Davro did an amazing job memorising and reciting hundreds of countries in his ‘Circus Medley’ (Act two)

As aforementioned, Anton Benson is the managing director and producer. The production team were astounding in relation to stage and technical management and production. The lighting, sound, scene, props etc were brilliant, the backstage crew playing a crucial role in ensuring a smooth operation, bringing organisation and dedication, coordinating well.

One very memorable scene, and a great example of clever staging, is where Pinocchio is supposedly drowning in the ocean, with an inflatable shark 🦈 predator pursuing him. The water is theatrically expressed by a blue horizontal cloth, spread out across the stage, to which Pinocchio and dancers stick out various bodily limbs and perform funny ‘drowning’ poses behind the cloth 💙💙

Tik-Tok turned out good in the end, Pinocchio saves the baddie, proving his worth and therefore becoming a ‘real boy’ and well, you could say, all is perfect in panto land..

One element I was somewhat disappointed with however was the matter of Pinocchio’s nose. The norm being, everytime Pinocchio tells a lie, the nose is supposed to grow 🤔  The extending nose prop was only used in one scene, maybe two which I recall, yet (and as I am sure many would agree) it is integral and an important aspect of the original story…

Despite this, I thought the production was exemplary, our bellies hurt from laughing so much, and I cannot wait for the next panto! 😁😁

All information obtained from the official Anton Benson Productions (ABP) ‘Pinocchio’ programme

http://www.fandom.com [Accessed 17th April 2025]

Thank you ever so much for reading / viewing, I appreciate the support 🥰🥰

My next blog post will possibly be a Leeds travel blog, as I am visiting Leeds over the Easter weekend to support my lovely sister who is doing a charity run for Alzheimer’s Society, in memory of our beautiful mum. I am so proud of her! 😁😁

I am also still on with my ‘Alice in Wonderland’ diamond art 💎 🎨

Have a wonderful Easter, much love, Lauren xx

© 2025 Lauren Parr / https://unicornpostbox.com