Hannah Christina’s Rosie and Emilio Encinoso-Gil’s Rex in Elizabeth Godber’s Jingle All The Way at Pocklington Arts Centre
THIS is the third Christmas collaboration between Pocklington Arts Centre, playwright-director Elizabeth Godber and co-director Jane Thornton from the John Godber Company stable.
It also marks the last act of departing PAC artistic director Angela Stone, who has produced the show before returning to her native Scotland to live in Ullapool in the Highlands in January. Thank you, Angela, for all you have done for this East Yorkshire market town’s arts scene since October 2022.
“We take great pride in producing inclusive and engaging stories, bringing magical Christmas spirit to our stage and welcoming returning and new audiences to PAC,” she said, after completing a hat trick of Godber, Thornton and Stone enterprises, following in the snow tracks of The Elves And The Shoemaker: Save Christmas and Jack Frost’s Christmas Wish.
How right she is. Catching an evening performance, the audience of young children and their mums and dads were rapt in joyous attention as they revelled in the storytelling skills of writer Godber (yes, John ‘s daughter) and her cast of part-Spanish, wholly Hull-accented Emilio Encinoso-Gil, continuing his run of good form after such shows as John Godber’s Northern Soul song of praise, Do I Love You?, and professional debutante and Godber Theatre Foundation member Hannah Christina, a 2025 graduate of Performers College, Birmingham.
On Emily Clay’s beautiful set design of a forest of snowy Christmas trees, festive lights and multiple boxes, Encinoso-Gil’s Rex and Christina’s reindeer sister Rosie have newly enrolled at a new school, the East Riding Reindeer Academy, in Pocklington, it just so happens, as Christmas fast approaches.
Rosie wants to fit in, to be cool at school with the in-crowd, even if it means shunning her nerdy, outsider brother, with his never-ending list of interesting Christmas and Santa Claus facts but his struggle to know where he belongs.
She will have no problem in joining the Santa’s Sleigh cheerleaders. Rex, on the other hand, is anything but sporty and so initially is highly reluctant to compete to join the supremely athletic sleigh squad.
Rosie agrees to work with the schools’ coolest deer dudes, a strutting duo permanently in shades, even to inform on her brother. Ouch. Encinoso-Gil and Christina are a delightfully villainous duo as Jingle All The Way’s answer to Heathers, with deer-patterned jackets straight off the deer catwalk.
Hannah Christina and Emilio Encinoso-Gil’s to-cool-for-school villainous double act in Jingle All The Way
Nevertheless, not to be done over or outdone, this is an underdog, or rather underdeer story, where Encinsoso-Gil’s Rex finds his chutzpah to start training for the school-wide competition to fill the last place in the sleigh squad.
Kitted in American-college attire in green and red (Christina) and a different shade of red and green with brown (Encinoso-Gil) beneath antler headsets, they look suitably seasonal, their acting playful, physical and fun, their movement constantly changing (Encinoso-Gil’s energy-sapping training regime and weight-lifting exertions are a particular joy).
Their interaction with the audience is established quickly, topped off by a sing-song of Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer. Children are not slow to exhort their very vocal support for Rex with words of encouragement and cheers. Hurrah!
After appearing in both The Elves And The Shoemaker: Save Christmas and Jack Frost’s Christmas Wish, Dylan Allcock returns for a third Pock winter season, this time as musical director, contributing instantly catchy original songs and a slew of deer-orientated Christmas favourites, not least Chuck Berry’s evergreen Run Rudolph Run.
Godber’s script has room for pathos as well as plenty of humour (in Godber family tradition), complemented by ruddy-cheeked Christmas spirit and fast-moving sense of purpose and attention-sustaining momentum under the Godber-Thornton axis, keeping each half to only 30 minutes.
Godber scores high points for local references too, always a good idea in Christmas shows but sometimes neglected or underplayed by other shows.
Encinoso-Gil is thoroughly good company as the loser-turned-winner, while the multi-role-playing Christina impresses with her array of accents, from Scottish to American to Yorkshire, in her characterful, character-filled debut.
“We make something that’s a little bit different to panto,” said Angela Stone. If the continuation of this pantomime partnership is her Pocklington legacy, then how fitting that would be.
For tickets: 01759 301547 or pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.