This festive season, Archibald Haddock has partnered with Narwhal Theatre to bring over a beloved British holiday tradition - the pantomime! Expect ridiculous antics, magic, high camp and of course, live musical numbers. This year, Cinderella, played by Martine Vanderzande, will be rushing off to the hottest event of the decade - the Royal Ball! The Fairy Godmother shall be played by the stunning Bianca Castafiore. Book your tickets now, and hurry before the strike of midnight!
After returning from a disastrous stay in China, Tintin wonders if he has finally bitten off more than he can chew. In an effort to save a struggling theatre, Haddock and Ramo Nash have produced a panto of Cinderella to raise funds. Tintin accepts the offer to be stage manager, hoping that staying busy during the holiday would keep his mind off the heartbreak from Chang's family drama back in Shanghai.
Not only has he underestimated how difficult stage management is, he has to deal with friction between the cast members, his own relationship issues with Chang, and a mounting pile of violent threats from far right groups who are deeply offended with the production...
The show must go on!
Haddock wrote the script, and Ramo Nash is overseeing set, prop and costume designs. Casting Chang as Prince Charming and Martine as Cinderella was an easy choice for Haddock - as Chang and Martine used to go dancing all the time, they've become excellent dance partners. Martine could also really do with the extra income, as the museum is closed for a part of the holiday.
Filling the other roles was more challenging. Haddock reluctantly casts Castafiore as he hopes her star power will draw crowds. Nobody auditioned for the role of the evil stepmother, other than irritating insurance salesman Jolyon Wagg. Surprisingly to Haddock, Wagg is a powerful presence on stage, being very capable of camping it up for the audience. Ignorant to Haddock's seething hatred of him, Wagg wants to do this to entertain his large family!
After receiving death threats from local fascists, the actors playing the ugly stepsisters drop out, fearing for their own safety. The Thompsons are sent in to monitor the situation, deciding the best course of action is to play a part in the pantomime themselves.
Calculus and a couple of trainees are brought on as stage technicians, joining Tintin backstage. Tintin finds it difficult watching Chang dance with Martine, as it constantly reminds him of how his relationship with Chang must remain secret.
also yes, this poster is a reference to the poster for Tintin and the Blue Oranges
Walter Schnackenberg’s style changed several times during his long and successful career. Having studied in Munich, the artist traveled often to Paris where he fell under the spell of the Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s colorful and sensuous posters depicting theatrical and decadent subjects. Schnackenberg became a regular contributor of similar compositions to the German magazines Jugend and Simplicissimus before devoting himself to the design of stage scenery and costumes. In the artist’s theatrical work, his mastery of form, and ornamentation became increasingly evident. He excelled at combining fluid Art Nouveau outlines, with spiky Expressionist passages.
In his later years, Schnackenberg explored the unconscious, using surreal subject matter and paler colors that plainly portrayed dreams and visions, some imbued with political connotations. His drawings, illustrations, folio prints, and posters are highly sought today for their exceedingly imaginative qualities, enchanting subject matter, and arresting use of color.
Schnackenberg Ballet und Pantomime, a portfolio of 22 color pochoir lithographic prints by Walter Schnackenberg with an introduction by Alexander von Gleichen-Russwurm, printed in an edition of 850, of which 50 examples were numbered and printed on Buttenpapier, commissioned by Kunstanstalt Albert Frisch in Berlin and published by Georg Muller Verlag, Munich, 1920.
Schnackenberg’s contemporary, the celebrated satirical artist Thomas Theodore Heine, described the sophistication, spiritual nature and sensuality of Modern Dance as “praying with your legs.”
In his introduction to Schnackenberg’s portfolio Ballet und Pantomime, Alexander von Gleichen-Russwurm, the godson of King Ludwig and Friedrich Schiller’s heir, writes of its timeliness. He recognizes the portfolio’s uplifting nature in the face of humiliation and defeat in the aftermath of war. He insightfully points out the primal power of Modern Dance and how Schnackenberg expertly and artfully translates his keen sense of movement to the graphic medium. Perhaps most significative is his commentary on Schnackenberg’s creation of a fantasy through the use of classical precedent, exotic cultures and the Carnival tradition. Schnackenberg’s personages assume the roles of wizards, ghosts, flowers, and insects, they are harlequins and an African princess, a Native American shaman, a Vedic dancer and a Waltz dancer; they are man-made items like a powder puff or become the personification of night, itself. A distinctive aspect of the Modern experience is the multiple roles each of us play on a daily basis. While Schnackenberg’s carnivalesque dancers serve as a means of escape through fantasy, they also represent a leveling effect by broadening awareness to augment the possibilities of social existence. Another aspect of modern life which Schnackenberg’s work addresses is the multitude of choices we have and our ability as consumers to make for ourselves something unique out of often-times mass-produced and duplicative items. Schnackenberg’s was not a pessimistic take on modernity, but rather anticipated a gestalt sensibility where one can assemble disparate parts to create an organic structure which functions in a manner greater than the sum of its parts. His dancers are summations of parts, summations of movements: a naturalistically rendered section of torso with deeply shaded regions to accentuate the curve of the rib cage and musculature around the chest and upper arm is balanced by flat patterns of colorful fabric; bare flesh is contrasted by costume; an expressive face pokes out from a fantastical headdress; arms are contorted into mannered poses; feet emerge to complete the amalgamation of pantomimic experience and dynamic movement. Parts become wholes.
Schnackenberg’s prescient understanding of the potentially marginalized and fracturous nature to modern life provides a soothing balm with many possibilities. Indeed, Schnackenberg recognized that dance in his era had moved far beyond the surface of mere visual delight, that dance was the medium - the modern allegory - with which to capture deep feeling and the essence of the modern experience. By designing ballet costumes and illustrating the final outcome of a costumed dancer in full performance mode, Schnackenberg has created his own gestalt of dance which was not only timely for his modern age but resonates powerfully today.
