Dick Turpin and Duet For One

I'm going to review both of these shows in one entry to reduce the amount of posts and to reduce the amount of work for me.
Dick Turpin is an original pantomime written by Berwick Kaler. Let me begin by explaining what a pantomime, simply called panto, is. A panto is based on a fairy tale or folk hero and is done around Christmas time mostly. Turpin is a local hero of York. He was a highwayman who stole from girls then returned the stolen goods for a kiss. There's a lot of cross dressing and men often play women roles. There's always someone good and bad, a person who falls in love with the hero, and a simple character (someone who does silly things). The scenery is often extravagent and a lot of costume changes. At the end of a panto the audience learns a song and then gets divided in half to compete against each other. There's also messages that are read out saying hi to people in the audience. All of the above was true. The lighting was amazing with about 4 IQ lights being used along with regular lights. Everything was over the top extavagent and it was really cool. There was a lot of audience participation as well as some parts where the characters looked as though they were improvising, even though many of them had probably been written into the script or broke character to start laughing, which I guess is normal for a panto. It added to the excitement and humor of the show. There was humor for all ages I enjoyed it.
Duet For One: was written by a man named Tom Kempinski. We saw it at the Almeida Theatre which caters to a more upper class population like BBC executives and business owners, so I dressed up really sharp. The lighting and set design was really simple. There were only two people in the entire two and a half hour show. The whole story took place in a psychiatrist’s office so there were no set changes. The coolest part of the set was that there was a fake window which could be light or dimmed to create the time of day and sometimes it would be opened and you could hear the sound of birds in the background as the scene was taking place. The story was interesting since it revolved around a famous violinists struggle with MS, which is actually suppose to be about Jaqueline Du Pre with a name and instrument change. You could see the changes and stages of MS as the women went trhough them. There were a few times where I didn't understand what was going on but I was able to catch up in the next scene. The actors were capable of capturing the audience's attention but I had trouble paying attention since there were no lighting, scenic, or character changes to focus on.