Was it a bird? Was it a plane? No, it was a spaceship bearing Lance McKrack and his companions as they travelled to rescue Dr X. Mass, encountering goblins, space beavers, and a smitten robot along the way.

Presented by Tide Nor Time Players, Lance McKrack and the Dr X. Mass Adventure was an original story penned by Paul A.T. Wilson and featuring a host of colourful characters of human, alien and cyborg origin alike.

Candy Cassidy was a perfect choice for Lance McKrack, giving Lord Flasheart vibes from the start.

Another excellent performance came from Olivia Padina-Gray as Ignatius Inferno.

Both actors showed great wit and comic timing, and neither was afraid to interact directly with the audience.

Aaron Danvers-Jukes was suitably authoritative in his cameo role as General Arash, while Carys Broome as Professor Brainovski and Marilyn Bersey as Cookie also put in particularly strong turns.

The show could have benefited from fewer songs, or perhaps just a little more script to space them out further, and the imbalance between tracks and vocals meant that whilst the song lyrics were clever, and witty, many got missed.

It had definite panto elements throughout, but the audience reaction points were not always clear and early on these had to be prompted by the director.

By Act 2, though, everyone seemed to have the hang of who needed booing!

Pantomime is also famous for innuendo and wordplay, of which there was plenty, albeit some was more ‘on the nose’ than the double entendre for which pantos are generally known. 

Several actors were on script, but all credit must go to them for their teamwork and resilience in continuing with the show when - as was made known at the start of the evening - they had faced adversity in recent weeks.

With some fine-tuning, this show has a lot of promise as a sort of Rocky Horror style panto.

As Paul said in his pre-show announcement, it’s ‘supposed to be a bit of fun’, and that certainly seemed to be what the performers were having!