By David Greenham

The goal of a panto is to provide amusement, and this one does, its creative performance team scoring with the help of a generous serving of faux-Americana. 

Casey at the Bat: An All-American Panto! by Matthew Woods, Kiki Samko, and Evan Turissini. Directed by Matthew Woods. Choreography by Laura Detwiler and Kiki Samko, Costumes by Cotton Talbot-Minkin. Tech direction and lighting by Andrew Mullholland. Sound by Matthew Woods.Masks by Camille Chartier. Staged by imaginary beasts and presented at the Topsfield Town Hall in partnership with the Topsfield Historical Society, Topsfield, through October 26.

A scene from imaginary beasts’ Casey at the Bat: An All-American Panto!. Photo: courtesy of the artist

Instead of waiting for the holiday season or winter months, the quirky Boston-based ensemble imaginary beasts has targeted the baseball playoffs for their annual Panto, a comic and music romp that’s part melodrama, part theater of the absurd. For baseball fans, Ernest Lawrence Thayer’s beloved 13-stanza poem Casey at the Bat perfectly captures the hopes and heartbreak of America’s pastime.

This year, the beasts are returning to Topsfield, where their Panto tradition began 18 years ago. Built in 1873, the newly renovated Topsfield Town Hall is an ideal spot to celebrate Thayer’s 1888 classic. The community center feel of the space also fits imaginary beasts goal of ‘bringing traditional and non-traditional artists together to produce work for an eclectic public.”

Thayer’s poem centers on Casey (Evan Turissini) who is determined to lead the ‘Mudville nine’ to a come-from-behind victory. The panto adds a sensational background plot to the poem by introducing Homer Humdinger (Cameron Hinkle), an enterprising Mudville entrepreneur who is desperate to bring a baseball team to town. Cue a reference to the old song, ‘the devil went down to Mudville looking for a soul to steal.’ Enter requisite bad guys: evil-doer Silverado Quick (Matthew Woods) and his shift-shaping flunky Miss Slump (Kiki Samko). Quick proposes a deal — Homer exchanges his soul (to the Devil) for his dream. A mysterious angel for good, Pop Fly (Molly Kimmerling), intervenes to try to talk Homer out of the plan. But he’s determined to go through with it, so she forces some conditions on the deal. Homer gets an escape clause: if the Mudville team wins their first game, the agreement is void.

With the central conflict in place, the ensemble is free to goof and gag their way through the story. According to the Devil’s contract, Homer can’t be the team manager, so his self-important sister Dottie (Colin McIntire) arrives be the manager — she has plenty of bravado but zero knowledge of baseball. Team Player A and B (Laura Detwiler and Hampton Richards) take on the roles of six of the Mudville infielders and outfielders. A quirky, lactose intolerant, accordion playing Sox the Cat (Camille Chartier) fills in at shortstop. The inevitable love interest storyline arrives via baseball know-it-all Katie Casey (Julia Hertzberg) and earnest rookie Dewey Day (Tommy Vines), who makes up for his poor fielding skills with over-the-top energy and enthusiasm. And, of course, there’s the mighty Casey, Katie’s older brother, whose self-confidence belies his insecurity and the fact that he gets his clout power from his special brass bat.

A scene from imaginary beasts’ Casey at the Bat: An All-American Panto!. Photo: courtesy of the artist

True to the panto tradition, the production is filled with well-known and sort of well-known songs with rewritten lyrics, including ‘Take Me Out To The Ballgame”, Gypsy’s “Everything’s Coming Up Roses”, “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend”, Damn Yankees’ “Whatever Lola Wants”, and “High Hopes”. It’s Red Sox country, so naturally there are references to Neil Diamond’s ‘Sweet Caroline”.

There’s a clear tie-in here between the traditional British music hall panto tradition and turn-of-the-century melodrama. There’s even a tribute to Russian pantomime Slava Polunin’s eclectic tramp costume design when Dewey hides (in plain sight) after being wrongly accused of sharing the secret of Casey’s bat with Quick. As usual in panto, the conflict between good and evil is clear, musical underscoring abounds, and audience participation is encouraged. Attendees are asked to whoop and holler, warn of danger, and cheer on the happy moments.

And there are plenty of happy moments here. Detwiler and Samko’s silly yet archly self-aware choreography uses the limited stage area to its full advantage. Cotton Talbot-Minkin’s costumes are fun and colorful. The well-designed, flamboyant set panels create the bucolic 19^th century setting of a baseball stadium, accented by pastoral in the style of Georges Seurat painting. Andrew Muholland’s lighting design is limited by what’s available at the Topsfield Town Hall, but he makes amusing use of footlights to give the space the feel of an olde tyme music hall.

A scene from imaginary beasts’ Casey at the Bat: An All-American Panto!. Photo: courtesy of the artist

The ensemble makes merry. At times lines are lost amid the fury or the enunciation is a bit rough or too soft, and the production could benefit from a music director. But that’s not really the point. As a creative performance team, they deliver. Detwiler and Richards are trusty functionaries, focused on the business at hand, who keep much of the comic action careening. Hertzberg’s Katie, though an underwritten character, is interesting to watch and leaves us wanting more. Hinkle brings a pleasant innocence to Homer, and McIntire’s cross-dressing Dottie is appropriately ridiculous. Vines delivers an earnest energy to Dewey that eventually becomes as appealing as it is convincing.

Physically, Chartier’s Sox the Cat is delightfully expressive. But the figure’s poetic potential is ignored; she doesn’t seem to contribute much to the story. Samko’s Miss Slump and her various disguises are entertaining and varied, but Slump could do without the added twist of ‘playing’ geriatric. Likewise, Kimmerling’s Pop Fly would benefit from being magical and forget about ‘playing’ old. Turissini’s Casey supplies a lot of breadth but little depth. A national myth offers more to dig into.

In co-writing, directing, creating the musical soundtrack, and playing a key character, Matthew Woods takes on too much, which explains moments of sloppiness that cry to be ironed out. Panto (and melodrama for that matter) are more effective when their ups and downs are conveyed with straight-faced honesty. Less winking at the audience from the imaginary beasts would help. The plot is chucklesome, but its twists and turns need to be filled out with more theatrical detailing to keep the audience engaged with the eventual (and pleasantly surprising) outcome. Still, the goal of the panto is to provide amusement, and this one does, with a generous serving of faux-Americana.

With apologies to Ernest Lawrence Thayer:

Oh, somewhere in this troubled land we seek a shining light;
Our landscape’s crammed with politics designed to make us fight,
Somewhere there should be laughing, silly songs, and shouts: ‘hooray.’
So, visit Casey up in Topsfield, where rookie Dewey saves the day!

David Greenham is an arts and culture consultant, adjunct lecturer on Drama at the University of Maine at Augusta, and is the former executive director of the Maine Arts Commission. He can be found at https://davidgreenham.com/