With The Dungeon, the Dragon and the Wizard of Doom: A D&D Holiday Show Adventure
Arcata Playhouse is bringing the British tradition of a Christmas pantomime to Humboldt once again. Pantomimes are often thought of as silent endeavors but this incarnation is the opposite. Christmas pantomimes, or “pantos,” are community centered, derived theater that combines fairy tales and current events with humor, song and music. Traditional elements are drag performances of the “Panto Dame” and the hero, audience participation, sing-alongs, good-natured audience roasting and a plethora of puns.
With The Dungeon, the Dragon and the Wizard of Doom: A D&D Holiday Show Adventure, Arcata Playhouse brings a panto inspired by world-renowned collaborative storytelling tabletop game Dungeons and Dragons, commonly known as D&D. Many aspects of the game mirror the derived theater of panto. Both are cooperative storytelling; everyone contributes to the story to make it greater than the sum of its parts. Both evolve in response to their environments. A role-playing game can be a campaign that takes place over the course of years and will naturally reflect changes in the players’ lives, while a key aspect of a panto is how its story reflects current events. For both, the rules that define the scope and world of the story-making are created and adhered to by agreement amongst players. This requires trust between them to meet the full potential of the storytelling. D&D and pantos serve a common purpose of processing events through the lens of storytelling. The scope of their audiences differs in that D&D are private games, while pantos are public performances. One critical difference is the random factor that is integral to D&D and absent from derived theater, a gap writer/director Evan Grande and co-director James Peck bridged by including dice rolls by audience volunteers.
Arcata Playhouse doesn’t offer a program for the panto. I may be reading into that, but it seems to me that by not naming the cast, they keep themselves part of the community. Each individual on stage is equally important to those unnamed in the audience. I even hesitate to name the cast in this review to respect that philosophy and the importance of the community focus of the show. I will say the cast and crew range in experience from professional to novice. They all pitched in for costumes and scenery. They all contributed to plot and dialogue. It’s hard work to bring this art form into being, and I’m grateful to everyone involved.
The Queendom of Dame Queen Ivana Hugalot (James Peck) has suffered from the oppression of a gold hoarding dragon. The Queen has arranged a marriage for her daughter Rosalind (Kelly Garnand) with wealthy paladin Abriel of Trinidadia (Abigail Maguire) to refill the queendom’s coffers. On the wedding day, Boind Umbranova (Evan Grande), an evil wizard of the highest financial order, and his hench-orcs Gruk (Vaya Sabadicci), Gleek and Grock (puppeted by Victoria Timoteo) kidnap Princess Rosalind. They plan to sacrifice her to the greedy dragon as part of a sketchy financial scheme. Abriel, his companion Trergibjae (Alexandra Hilsee) and the cleric Ecclesias (Benjamin Shaeffer) form an adventure party to save the princess. There are magical portals, scary tunnels and a riddling robot named Arty (Marilyn Foote). The characters grow, capitalism is challenged, dice are rolled, and love wins the day.
On opening night, the audience was packed into the lobby while waiting for the house to open. The chatter was cheerful, the atmosphere festive and the concessions flowing, which made the wait easy to bear. It was a full house, so it took a bit for everyone to get seated once it opened. The band, comprised of Tim Randles, Jeff Kelly, Marla Joy and Charlie Eitel, played original tunes while we waited. We were treated to a few choral numbers from the Blue Lake Choir, which also provided excellent sound effects and more musical numbers throughout the show. Dame Queen Ivana Hugalot did some crowd work and explained what the audience’s role was for the evening.
The characters are classic high-fantasy archetypes with modern motivations that spoke of current events. They are all uniquely hilarious, surprisingly complex and overall well played. A few performances that evening were a bit clunky or flat at first, but they stepped up by the second act. I believe the success of opening weekend will build their confidence for the second one.
As a long-time fan of fantasy and role-playing games, I enjoy how the Playhouse players use the genre to poke fun at the real-life dragon of late-stage capitalism. Reality is awfully bleak right now. The panto gives us a way to process it together with humor and heart. It felt good to be able to cheer the good guys, boo the bad guys and laugh at boogeymen with my community. Dungeon masters and players, actors and audience, we are all in this together.
Arcata Playhouse’s The Dungeon, the Dragon and the Wizard of Doom: A D&D Holiday Show Adventurecontinues with 7 p.m. shows Thursday, Dec. 11, and Friday, Dec. 12, and at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 13, and Sunday, Dec. 14. Visit playhousearts.org.
Doranna Benker Gilkey (she/her) is co-owner of Dandar’s Boardgames and Books, purveyor of aforementioned D&D games (and many others) in Arcata.
NOW PLAYING
Ferndale Repertory Theatre’s production of The Wizard of Oz continues with performances on Fridays at 7:30 p.m., and Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m., through Dec. 21. Visit ferndalerep.org.
Longshadr’s behind-the-curtain holiday show Yet Another Non-Profit Christmas Carol, about a storm-bound theater company’s board, takes the stage at Mad River Grange Dec. 9-14 with 6 p.m. performances. Call (707) 677-5011.
This article appears in Sacred Groves.