★★★★☆
Who’s up for cheap jokes at West End prices? Actually, after three hours — three hours! Seriously! — watching panto return to the Palladium after almost 30 years, I am. There are certainly faults with this disarmingly excessive production, but doing things by halves is not one of them.
So we get flying horse-drawn carriages, flying Amanda Holdens, flying Julian Clarys — the last of these at one point even plying his high-end double entendres upside down, just above the heads of the boys and girls in the stalls. Clary’s costumes alone could probably fund a regional theatre for a year (he plays Dandini, though don’t get hung up on the plot — the writers haven’t).
We get Paul O’Grady, sourly cracking wise as the evil stepmother, although the more fluidly funny Clary is the star, despite getting second billing. And if you don’t like O’Grady or Clary, a second later you get virtuoso ventriloquism from Paul Zerdin as Buttons. Or 15 dancing pumpkins. Or I Will Survive, kitted out with new words.
Holden has a dead hand with the comedy in the admittedly thankless role of the rhyming Fairy Godmother. Steve Delaney appears as his great comedy character Count Arthur Strong, playing Baron Hardup. He speeds up his act but struggles in this quickfire context. And what is there left for Nigel Havers to do amid all these middle-aged comics, these lithe young dancers dancing to music so heavily amplified you need earplugs? Not a lot, but actually that’s the gag: Nige proves the most genuinely charming element of the evening as he parodies his own desperate need to have something to do. The Havers revival starts here.
It is all a clattery celebration and a subversion of its own old-fashioned tropes. So amid all this rampantly entertaining spirit-of-variety hoo-ha there is little room for poor old Cinders (Natasha J Barnes, sweet-voiced, terrific) and Prince Charming (Lee Mead, a sturdy and tuneful straight man) to get a look-in.
Advertisement
This triumph of mockery over magic in Michael Harrison’s mega-budget production may play to the grown-ups more than their kids. Still my eight-year-old insisted that she loved it too, even if much of Clary’s expert filth sailed over her head, I’m delighted to say. It’s naff, it’s overblown, and I had a ball.
Box office: 0844 8740667, to January 15