Review: Robin Hood and His Merry Men
A Riot of Colour, Comedy, and Cloistered Chaos
Dorchester Abbey Cloister Gardens, July 12, 2025
As Britain wilted under the third heatwave of the summer, Dorchester Abbey’s Cloister Gardens offered welcome shade for cast and audience alike to enjoy DAD’s Robin Hood and His Merry Men. This retelling of the much-loved Robin Hood story was ably directed by Ed Metcalfe, a DADS stalwart, who also gave us Friar Tuck (adorned with a comically huge cross), and the surprise show-stealing Lumberjack, which triggered a rousing rendition of Monty Python’s ‘Lumberjack Song’ (of course it did!).
What this 18-strong cast offered was less historical epic, more garden-party anarchy. With the Cloister Gardens providing a near-perfect medieval backdrop, the cast of merry men – and woman – pranced and plotted their way through the ever-present jeopardy that poor Maid Marian might be forced to wed the sinister Sheriff of Nottingham.
Speaking of the Sheriff – played with delicious malevolence by Mike Lord – his every sneer and threat to cancel holidays, sick days and birthdays drew boos from the Pimms-fuelled audience. His scheme to raise taxes to replace Sherwood Castle with a fancy new-build and marry Marian drove the plot forward with familiar pantomime urgency. He also had his eye on the King’s ransom of 10,000 gold sovereigns to boot. ‘Being nice isn’t in my job description,’ and didn’t we know it. Marian herself, played elegantly by Roisin Barnfather, struck just the right balance between plucky independence and romantic idealism, armed as she was, with her withering put-downs every time the Sherriff entered stage right.
Lucinda Kendrick delivered an outstanding performance as the outlaws’ hero, dazzling in luxurious purple. After a swift outfit change during the interval – courtesy of costume sorceress Elaine Williams – Kendrick re-emerged all Sherwood-Forest-green and charming, now the elected leader of the fearsome but ‘still useless’ band of outlaws. The merry band provided some of the evening’s biggest laughs. Andy Pay’s Much, the Miller’s son, with his mass of warts (he should see a doctor about that) was wonderful as were Steve Eyre’s space-cadetish Alan A’dale and Ian Brace’s Little John. Standout among them was DADS regular Carol-Ann Tilley who played feisty card-carrying feminist Will Scarlet with scene-stealing gusto.
Comic relief came thick and fast, not least from Dogberry – a gloriously bumbling, Baldrick-esque figure brought to life by Sally Bell. With her signature ‘Yes, chief!’ response, Bell had the audience in hysterics. Another star turn came from Christine Jones as Lady Clementine – Robin’s long-suffering and utterly fabulous mother. Played with the delivery of a Northern stand-up, Lady Clementine – definitely not Lady Tangerine, Lady Magazine or Lady Windowlene – delighted the audience with her oft-repeated lament: ‘I need a man!’
Even the Sherwood Forest and Castle scenery – beautifully crafted by Adrian Brooks (lucky DADS to have an Actual Artist in our neck of the woods) and, again, Ed Metcalfe, got in on the act. Enter comedy duo Tree 1 and Tree 2 played by James Pratt and Seth Collington, the two pun-tastic human props dressed in full arboreal regalia while nimbly avoiding the lumberjack. They were barking mad and putting down new roots, don’t ya know.
The whole production thrived on the energy and enthusiasm of a cast clearly enjoying themselves as much as the audience. It was messy, musical, marvellously silly – and utterly joyous. All ended happily ever after with the Sheriff getting his comeuppance and, in true Pride and Prejudice style, the double wedding of Marion to Robin and Lady Clementine – who got her man after all – to the dapper Lord Knowse, played by the OG DADS-ter, Mark Williams.
Props also go out to the whole DADs crew who got the set ready in the blistering heat only to bring it all down again a few days later. With audience participation (‘he’s behind you!’), a glamorous narrator (Rosemary Metcalfe) and up-to-the-minute Trump gags, who says pantomime is limited to the chilly winter months?