Freeze Frame Opera’s Goldilocks and the Three Bears sets pantomime to the music of Mozart on schools tour

If heaven is caviar to the sound of trumpets, primary kids’ paradise is pantomime to the music of Mozart in Freeze Frame Opera’s latest touring production. Goldilocks and the Three Bears, mashed up with The Marriage of Figaro, combines the wit and wisdom of singer-writer-director Penny Shaw with Tommaso Polio’s arranging and keyboard genius for a short, sharp and very funny show. As Mummy Bear (Hattie Marshall) lays the table to the lilting strains of Mozart’s ear-worm overture, we all know what’s coming next. She departs with Daddy Bear (Samuel Claxton) and Baby Bear (Charis Postmus) as Goldilocks (Bonnie Staude) moves in; eating and retiring to bed. Daddy and Baby return from a walk in the woods, counting exercise lunges and wildflowers to Mozart’s opening duet, Cinque … dieci … venti; a touching scene interrupted by breakfast banditry. Daddy erupts in Figaro’s most heroic and revolutionary aria, Se vuol Ballare, with a full-blown hissy fit over … pilfered porridge. If the kids don’t twig the joke the opera aficionados will. Baby and Goldilocks get acquainted to the strains of Voi che sapete, sonorously and sweetly making overtures, and Goldilocks asks: “Why do they call you Baby?” “Because Mummy said she doesn’t want anyone to put me in a corner.” Sublime musical moments interspersed with physical and verbal slapstick are the hallmark of FFO’s schools’ shows, and this, their fifth, doesn’t disappoint. Baby and Goldilocks beautifully capture childish play, channelling the farm girls in Mozart’s original. But Daddy has wants to hunt down Goldilocks, who promptly escapes. Baby is packed off to boarding school, just as Mozart’s overly amorous Cherubino is sent off to the army, to the strains of Non piu andrai; with a khaki greatcoat to underline the parallel. Goldilocks continually charms the audience and self-conscious humour moves the action along as Baby observes: “Daddy Bear is furious, he’s absolutely lost the plot … Mummy Bear aways knows what to do.” Enter Mummy Bear, stage left: “I don’t know what to do,” she says, with a butter-wouldn’t-melt grin. Mummy weaves a web of intrigue, drawing Baby, Goldilocks and the audience into her scheming: “Shall we teach Daddy Bear a lesson?” “Yes!!!” Cross-dressing deception undermines the patriarchal order, just as in Mozart’s version, with similar warm notes of apology, forgiveness and reconciliation. Just don’t tell the kids what the Count was plotting in the original — not for a few years yet. At last, a gloriously happy-ever-after chorus squares off the bill; an operatic epic wrapped up within the attention span of a school lesson. Goldilocks and the Three Bears is on tour until the end of May. FFO returns to the main stage in Dead Man Walking at Fremantle Prison in September.