Issue 25 / 26, 2005
Prompt Corner
In the first three weeks of December I saw seven, seven and six shows respectively. But at least the final offering in the six-show week was 36 hours long. And, to be entirely candid, I only saw 22 hours of it. Well, the venue happened to be only five minutes' walk from my flat, so I nipped off for a snooze and accidentally ended up enjoying the only decent night's sleep I'd had in weeks. But anyway...
It was a Ken Campbell project, of course. The man who is to mainstream theatre what the Compendium bookshop in Camden used to be to Waterstone's has always been fond of what posier practitioners call "durational pieces": his nine-hour adaptation of Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatusl Trilogy was the opening production at the Cottesloe Theatre in 1977 (and is rumoured to have a revival imminent), and I cut my own bonkers-marathon teeth on his and his daughter Daisy's 1997-2000 revivals of Neil Oram's ten-play cycle The Warp, which lasted between 22 and 29 hours depending on how much collective fun was being had and how badly the lead actor's brain had melted. (Protagonist Phil Masters, explains Campbell, "appears in every scene except four, and they're very short ones.")
Impro-soap
Campbell has recently been running improvisation workshops/training sessions at the Royal Court and the Inn on the Green beneath the Westway motorway. This was his first major goal: a marathon which at least began to approach the events that had inspired him, the regular 53-hour sessions of impro-soap Die Nasty organised by Dana Andersen in Edmonton, Canada. Campbell was delighted that Andersen had agreed to visit in order to act as cheerleader, head-doctor and ringmaster to the cast of 20 or so actors.
As entirely fictitious characters mingled with scurrilous (but also often wickedly accurate) impersonations at the imaginary literary festival which was the setting for the saga, Andersen, sifting in a booth at the back of the room, would marshal the cast scene by scene by announcing into his microphone, "Festival director Richard and his wife Amy are having a rough time of it", "Woody Allen is seduced by Paris Hilton", or the like. Every so often, just to liven things up, a character would burst into song. ("Jennifer Lopez" proved so unmusical that she had to lip-sync to someone offstage... I did say "often wickedly accurate".)
Cartoon
During my involvement with The Warp, I had made the transition from reviewer to camp follower to sometime performer, and during the Improvathon I began again to feel the urge to get involved. After a few hours' kip, I thought, I would volunteer to enter the fray, playing a cartoon version of myself, a slightly incompetent, out-of-focus journalist. On my return, however, I realised it was not to be, not this time at least. Part of the reason was that it took me a couple of "episodes" (the proceedings were divided into roughly two-hour chunks: an hour and three-quarters on, followed by a 15-minute interval) to catch up with proceedings. Everyone had changed character: my favourite, James the eccentric boiler operator, had become lain Banks, and the Australian barman was now Kevin Spacey (plugging his autobiography, Walking In The Park With Dogs).
More to the point, though, I realised that I would not have been properly improvising so much as looking for cues to launch off on riffs of my own. It was by now apparent that the improve worked best (as it always does) when informed by a spirit of generosity and collaboration, and was stymied when someone stuck too closely to an individual shtick, and I didn't want to go the wrong way. In any case, matters were slowly working to a climax, as a bom-again Islamic fundamentalist Woody Allen planned to blow up HM the Queen at the end of a pantomime he had written for her... well, bE honest, did the plots of Dallas ever make that much more sense?
Enthusiasms
And, amidst all that material and all that playing time, one moment of realisation struck me most deeply. The first session, from 10 a.m. until noon on the Saturday, featured an inspired cameo: a Pooterish little man who had written a book detailing the right place to stand on various Tube station platforms so that you alight at the other end of your journey right by the exit rather than having to walk the length of the platform. (It's a quirk practised by every regularly Tube-travelling Londoner.) I was struck that actor Michael Mears had retained the Edwardian mutton-chop whiskers he had grown for his recent appearance in You Never Can Tell at the West End. But after the first episode he left, and it was several hours before I realised that Mears' role in the Shaw play wasn't "recent", but ongoing: he had turned up to the kick-off of Campbell's event, then gone off to the Haymarket for the final two performances of the "proper" show, and afterwards returned to the Inn on the Green for the remainder of the Improvathon. That's a perfect emblem of the enthusiasms that Ken Campbell can invoke, and the commitment that performers can bring to his projects.
In many ways, Ken's show was one of the highlights of my pre-Christmas frenzy. A combination of paid engagements in my other critical incarnations and the persistently packed London opening
schedule (which simply didn't let up from mid-September until a couple of days before Christmas) meant that I saw far fewer pantos than usual this year - only the Hackney Jack And The Beanstalk, as captured on this issue's cover, and the revised Old Vic Aladdin; my reviews of both shows can be found elsewhere on these pages, with the other Ian making a whistle-stop tour of pantos (at the front of this issue) before resuming his intercontinental series of Meetings With Remarkable Names (as detailed at the back).
Taxed
I did see a couple of other seasonal shows, though. I'm very fond of Chris Green's drag alter ego, country singer Tina C, but a colleague proved spot on when they asked me if this show was simply more of the same. It was. Tina scores big in not ducking political gags, praising Condi Rice for "travelling the world, being aggressive to countries you haven't even heard of, and all in white Jaeger, and you know how that creases." It's the songs themselves that are the weak link. Although excellently played and arranged, they are less New Country in genre than slabs of singer-songwriter plangency. Green's singing voice as Tina is from the nasal Alanis Morrisette mould, albeit enlivened with coloratura splurges. Each song really only contains one or two decent gags, so what we get are either semi-developed fragments or full numbers that outstay their welcome. And speaking of which, value for money and encores are all very well, and things may have been a little untogether on the first night, but when a supposedly 75-minute show overruns by more than a full half-hour I find my goodwill beginning to be taxed as sorely as were the people of Judaea under Caesar Augustus.
As for Hergé's Adventures Of Tintin, the reviews in this issue say all that needs to be said. It gives me a nice warm Christmas-present feeling to see Simon Trinder graduating from warm critical approbation to outright raves... and for playing a terrier! Alastair Macaulay pretty much sums up my own response to this remarkably endearing comic actor; as for the other reviewer who confessed to not being all that keen on Trinder, I shall forbear from naming them lest they end up surrounded by glowering faces and pointing fingers like the man in the classic Bateman cartoon.
Panto'd-up
I was less disappointed with the League of Gentleman than other reviewers. True, since the League's last TV series, they have been eclipsed by Little Britain (also currently on tour), whose format blends the League's grotesquerie with The Fast Shoals catchphrase-mania, and made a self-referential film, The League Of Gentlemen's Apocalypse, which did not really come off. Having changed the direction of British comedy, then, there was certainly a sense that the Royston Vasey setting and characters did not have much further to go. And at first the comedy of a number of characters in this show seemed excessively broad, until I realised that this wasn't simply a seasonal show or a batch of writ-large versions for the biggest theatre crowds, but that these were deliberately panto'd-up versions of the characters: Herr Lipp's unstoppable torrent of nudge-nudge innuendoes is not simply crowd-pleasing but a League-style parody of this kind of hack panto-dame patter, and so on. Even the panto programme is an inspired creation, very much in the style of the 1970s-style parody-showbiz magazine This Is It! Which the League produced in their early days (featuring, I recall, a centre-spread poster for Carry On Christie, with Sid James as the lovable serial murderer). This publication contained spot-on parodies of games, articles and event listings, including one which supposedly quoted a review of mine. It is a great accolade to be parodied by the League of Gentlemen, but if they think I'm going to fulfil the gag by calling their show "zany, madcap, off the wall", they've got another think co- Oh, bugger.
After the Improvafhon, Ken Campbell spoke of the possibility of getting his cohorts to improvise "the Royal Court play". I doubt they could come up with anything more parodic than the grim-Christmasup-north fare of What's In The Cat. An unremitting script, a tedious (and all-purpose Oirish) caterwauling from Mary Jo Randle, and bizarrely inept staging by Paulette Randall combined to end an undistinguished year at Sloane Square on a note that was distinguished for all the wrong reasons.
Just Fancy That!
"I also found one member of the cast intensely irritating, though since this person has been singled out for praise by almost every one of my colleagues I probably shouldn't set much store by this" - Toby Young, Spectator review of The Wild Duck, January 2006.
Oh, I don't know...
"...towards the end of the evening, one's own thoughts are turning to murder owing to young Miss Matthews's attention-gwabbing, pwetty-pwetty voice..." - Quentin Letts, Daily Mail review of The Wild Duck, December 2005.
"Sinead Matthews and Matthew Dunphy as the twins scamper about vivaciously but enunciate as if English were a foreign tongue to them" - Ian Shuttleworth, Teletext review of You Never Can Tell, November 2005.
A belated happy new year to you; and, in the words of that great man, Patrick Stewart, God bless us, every one.
At the Back
Between Ofelia and Quetzalcoatl
It's hard to know what to make of Mexican theatre. The negative impression I gained from seeing a not very representative selection of shows in Tampico in 2004 was tempered by the fact that Mexicans walked away with the design, costume and lighting gold medals at the World Stage Design exhibition in Toronto in 2005, as well as the sight of a couple of more than interesting shows in the Mexart 05 festival in London and Edinburgh. An invitation to the "First National Congress of Scenic Arts", organised by the redoubtable Isabel Quintanar of the Mexican Centre of the International Theatre Institute, seemed an ideal opportunity to find out more.
The Congress was particularly concerned with the role of theatre in education, and the extent of state and private intervention in the country's theatre. These topics were thoroughly examined by a series of mostly high level speakers from education, government and the private sector, interspersed with a string of performances from around the country in the clutch of theatres where the conference was held, in the National Institute of Fine Arts's headquarters. A focus was given to our deliberations by a recently published proposal for a new cultural law, which would put all Mexico's cultural institutions under one umbrella, headed by a Government official. This was the subject of violent protest from the whole artistic community, including most of those present. A cheer went up when it was announced at the end of the Congress that the proposal was being withdrawn.
Problems
Some of the more pressing problems for Mexican theatre were revealed both by what was said at the Congress and by what was not said. Speaker after speaker bemoaned the lack of provision for theatre, either as teaching method or as subject of aesthetic study, in Mexico's schools - not to mention the lack of teachers trained in the subject, or courses to train them. But most of these speakers were educationists or policy makers - not nearly enough professional theatre people were there to express a view, or to help define what kind of theatre might be educationally valuable.
More than 25 per cent of the country's 100 million inhabitants live in Mexico City, where more than a third of its 1600 registered performance spaces (which include hotels, cafes and prisons) can be found. A thousand "theatres" for 34 provinces doesn't seem a lot, and even in Mexico City a more realistic count of working professional theatres would yield a hundred at most. It has to be admitted that theatre everywhere in the country is a minority activity, with only one a and a half per cent of the population ever going near a performance.
Productions
What kind of theatre do these brave souls get? The capital has a small commercial sector - while I was there you could see Cabaret or choose from half a dozen mildly titillating shows in the vein of The Vagina Monologues. David Copperfield was playing the huge National Auditorium, which stands in front of the half dozen rather smaller spaces of the National Institute of Fine Arts. Here a mix of visiting companies and the National Theatre perform a rotating programme. Elsewhere, the Centro Hellenico's three spaces (and an open air arena) offer a different show every night, with a total of some fifty new productions a year. At the National University UNAM, a huge campus that is a city in itself, students and citizens alike are served by several professional theatres, including a cement complex reminiscent of London's National. With ticket
prices around US$10 (and a national minimum wage of US$4 a day) even a keen student will not be a frequent theatregoer. Support for non-commercial productions comes from a bewildering variety of government acronyms, chief among them the National Council for Culture and Fine Arts, CONACULTA.
Acclaimed
The season in Mexico City ends in mid-December, when the colleges close, leaving Christmas entertainment to the traditional pastoreles, half panto, half nativity play. What I caught at the end of the season was not, frankly, very impressive, and leading critics like Rodolfo Obregon (who also runs an enviable programme of research and archives for Mexican theatre) confirmed the view that this was a lean time. Mexico has groups of international standing, like Claudio Valdes Kuri's Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes, who have been acclaimed in many countries, and a reasonable supply of new writers, soon to be augmented by a whole wave under development by the Royal Court and the Centro Ellenico. London caught a glimpse of this project in a week of readings in Sloane Square this month, while a full co-production will be seen later in the year both at the Court and in Mexico's most prestigious international festival, the Cervantino in Guanajuato.
The country also boasts one of the best theatre magazines I have encountered recently, Paso de Gato, run by a well respected playwright, Jaime Chabaud.
But standards vary wildly, as does the artistic community's view of theatre, partly due to the local tendency to clan warfare: Mexico's critics, for instance, have a choice of half a dozen partisan associations to join, even though I was assured that there are no more than ten good critics in the whole country. And there is the huge gap between metropolis and regions - the productions from the regions which were invited to the Scenic Arts Congress, admittedly mostly student or semi-professional, were far distant in quality from the shows I saw at UNAM and from the National company. What should be an advantage for Mexico, its unique mix of Spanish colonial culture and indigenous local heritage, has hardly been tapped. The two cultures (dozens if you consider each individual tribe or province) exist happily side by side - at one Congress session I sat between an anthropologist named Ofelia and a journalist called Quetzalcoatl - but have yet to be fully exploited.
Machismo
Another problem is that of machismo. Mexican men still rule the roost domestically and artistically, and in spite of the presence of some very strong women there is much to be done in theatre. The head of CONACULT is a woman, as is the director of UNAM's theatres. Many of the best contributions to the Congress came from women. And yet the majority of Mexican directors and playwrights is resolutely male.
Still, there is a real sense of a country whose theatre brims with possibilities. State organisms are in place to support the arts, and as well as trained practitioners - still sadly few - there is a huge reservoir of natural talent in the mariachi bands on every street corner, the folk dance and amateur theatre groups all over the country, and the population's natural inclination to colour and exuberance in its everyday design. What is needed now, apart of course from the investment (which could repay itself in a better educated, culturally more sensitised community), is the sheer will to get out and make it happen.
Contents / Reviews
London |
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ALADDIN Return of new version by Bille Brown |
Old Vic |
16 Dec |
22 Jan |
1670 |
CANDLESTICKS New play by Deborah Freeman |
Lion & Unicorn |
6 Dec |
24 Dec |
1622 |
THE CANTERVILLE GHOST New adaptation by John Kane from Oscar Wilde |
Southwark Playhouse |
5 Dec |
23 Dec |
1656 |
A CHRISTMAS CAROL Return of Patrick Stewart solo adaptation from Charles Dickens |
Albery |
7 Dec |
31 Dec |
1659 |
A CHRISTMAS CAROL New adaptation by Joanna Volinska (Horla) (also Trafalgar Studio 2 22 Dec-7 Jan) New Wimbledon Studio |
6 Dec |
17 Dec |
1658 |
|
CINDERELLA Pantomime |
New Wimbledon |
9 Dec |
15 Jan |
1667 |
COELACANTH New solo play by Ben Moor |
Etcetera |
6 Dec |
15 Dec |
1620 |
DEEP END AT MARSHALL STREET BATHS New site-specific piece by Geraldine Pilgrim (Corridor Perf Co) |
Soho |
12 Dec |
17 Jan |
1639 |
THE GRUFFALO Return of adaptation from the Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler book (Tall Stories) |
Hampstead |
20 Dec |
7 Jan |
1639 |
HALF LIFE New play by Filip Vujosevic |
Blue Elephant |
8 Dec |
23 Dec |
1639 |
HERGES ADVENTURES OF TINTIN New adaptation by Rufus Norris and David Greig from Hergé |
Barbican |
14 Dec |
22 Jan |
1633 |
THE HISTORY BOYS Return of new play by Alan Bennett |
Lyttelton |
5 Dec |
1 Feb |
1617 |
I'M DREAMING OF A WHITE TRASH XMAS New piece by Chris Green, alias Tina C |
The Pit |
15 Dec |
30 Dec |
1669 |
JACK AND THE BEANSTALK New pantomime by Susie McKenna |
Hackney Empire |
7 Dec |
7 Jan |
1662 |
A JOURNEY TO LONDON Revival of play by Sir John Vanbrugh and James Saunders |
Orange Tree |
16 Dec |
11 Feb |
1647 |
THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN ARE BEHIND YOU! Pantomime by Jeremy Dyson, Mark Gatiss et al. |
Hammersmith Apollo |
1 Dec |
9 Dec |
1652 |
LYSISTRATA Revival of adaptation by Ranjit Bolt from Aristophanes |
Arcola |
15 Dec |
14 Jan |
1638 |
THE MAGIC CARPET New play by David Farr and Ben Hopkins |
Lyric Hammersmith |
8 Dec |
14 Jan |
1664 |
MINOR IRRITATIONS New play by Sam Peter Jackson |
White Bear |
21 Dec |
8 Jan |
1627 |
A NEW WAY TO PLEASE YOU Revival of play by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley (RSC) |
Trafalgar Studio 1 |
22 Dec |
31 Dec |
1649 |
THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA Revival of play by Tennessee Williams |
Lyric |
5 Dec |
1611 |
|
ONCE IN A LIFETIME Revival of play by George S Kaufman and Moss Hart (NT) |
Olivier |
15 Dec |
11 Mar |
1640 |
PINOCCHIO New adaptation by Trish Cooke from Carlo Collodi, with music by Robert Hyman |
T R Stratford E15 |
8 Dec |
21 Jan |
1666 |
THE RATCATCHER OF HAMELIN New play by Cartoon de Salvo |
BAC |
1 Dec |
14 Jan |
1654 |
READ MY HIPS New play by Ray Dobbins |
Drill Hall |
7 Dec |
23 Dec |
1650 |
ROSEBUD: THE LIVES OF ORSON WELLES New play by Mari( Jenkins (Edinburgh Fringe 2004) |
King's Head |
22 Dec |
21 Jan |
1651 |
SAUCY JACK AND THE SPACE VIXENS Revival of musical by Charlotte Mann, Michael Fidler et al. |
Venue |
6 Dec |
1616 |
|
THE SNOW DRAGON New play by Toby Mitchell (Tall Stories) |
Soho |
9 Dec |
8 Jan |
1669 |
SNOW! THE MUSICAL New musical by Richard Marsh |
Sound |
18 Nov |
3 Dec |
1654 |
SOPHIE TUCKER'S ONE NIGHT STAND New play by Chris Burgess |
New End |
8 Dec |
14 Jan |
1618 |
THE SUPER SLASH NAUGHTY XXXMAS STORY New play by Russell Barr |
Wilton's Music Hall |
5 Dec |
17 Dec |
1657 |
1001 NIGHTS NOW New play devised by Alan Lyddiard (Northern Stage/Nottingham Playhouse/Albany) |
Albany |
6 Dec |
17 Dec |
1615 |
TWELFTH NIGHT Revival of play by Shakespeare (RSC) |
Novello |
13 Dec |
31 Dec |
1625 |
WHAT'S IN THE CAT New play by Linda Brogan |
Royal Court Upstairs |
9 Dec |
22 Dec |
1619 |
THE WILD DUCK Revival of play by Henrik Ibsen, in new adaptation by David Eldridge |
Donmar |
13 Dec |
18 Feb |
1628 |
THE WIZ Revival of musical by William F Brown and Charlie Smalls, from story by L Frank Baum |
Upstairs at the Gatehouse |
17 Dec |
29 Jan |
1637 |
WOODY ALLEN'S MURDER MYSTERIES New adaptation by Janey Clarke from stories by Woody Allen |
Warehouse Croydon |
11 Dec |
19 Feb |
1621 |
YORGJIN 0X0 - THE MAN New play by Thomas Crowe |
Theatre 503 |
8 Dec |
23 Dec |
1648 |
Regions |
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THE CANTERBURY TALES New adaptation by Mike Poulton from the poem by Geoffery Chaucer |
Stratford, Swan |
8 Dec |
4 Feb |
1678 |
GREAT EXPECTATIONS New adaptation by Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod from Charles Dickens |
Stratford, Royal Shakespeare |
6 Dec |
4 Feb |
1674 |
DEAD FUNNY revival of play by Terry Johnson |
Leeds, WYP Courtyard |
12 Dec |
21 Jan |
1686 |
PROMISES, PROMISES Revival of musical by Neil Simon/Burt Bacharach/Hal David from The Apartment |
Sheffield, Crucible |
7 Dec |
21 Jan |
1684 |
Other Christmas ShowsCasts and reviews for
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Ian Herbert at the Panto
Five pantos in a week and it's a huge relief to say it's behind me. This is the time of year when theatres all over the country are most likely to be making money, most likely to be reaching new audiences, most likely to be creating tomorrow's theatregoers. All the audiences I joined, in near-full houses, were having a great time; all of them, in my view, were being woefully short-changed.
It would seem that a new pantomime tradition has arrived in the last few years. Panto had become too adult-oriented, too smutty, too full of references to TV shows and advertisements. This has been remedied: all the shows I saw were distinctly child-friendly. But now there appears to be a strange homogeneity about, with beloved old rituals being replaced with newer, weaker ones. The true magic of panto is still missing, submerged under merchandising.
Ur-script
It's not too surprising that some of the shows had their similarities. Three of them were from the new David Ian/Howard Panter First Family group, after all (I suppose I should have taken in a Qdos show too - put it down to bad planning). But the echoes were there in the Old Vic Aladdin, as well, and even in the homespun Natural Theatre version I saw at Greenwich. It's as if there is an ur-script somewhere, not by Planché and probably not by John Morley, but by someone who ought to be claiming a hefty slice of royalties from all the "writers" whose work is examined here.
And here's a strange thing about the writers. Two of the three First Family shows had the same author credited, two of them had the same basic word-for-word script. But they weren't the same two! Wimbledon's Cinderella and Richmond's Aladdin are said to be by one Paul Hendy, a sometime TV presenter, Woking's Aladdin by Jonathan (Gimme Gimme Gimme) Harvey, a sometime playwright. Now the Woking/Harvey end product was indeed very different from the Richmond/Hendy one, but I would put this down to Bobby Davro, who single-handedly converted a workaday (Hendy?) script into something near brilliance, with a string of off-the-cuff gags and some side-splitting business; this seems more likely to be the work of Mr Davro himself and his own material than of Mr Harvey.
Audience rapport
Anyway, Woking was without doubt a Good Night Out, its highlights including Davro, struggling to stay upright in the pouch of a kangaroo suit, leading the community singing of "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport". He also vastly enlivened an allegedly comic version of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" (which appeared, with exactly the same props, at Richmond, so I would tentatively ascribe it to Mr Hendy) by the sheer energy and invention he threw into it. In contrast, the Richmond version, like so much else there, was lackadaisical, characterised by the performance of Christopher Biggins playing the dame for the umpteenth time and directing, as well as acting, in his sleep. Ex-Bubble Theatre stalwart Matt Devitt let Davro and his cast have their heads, and they gave him their best. Biggins set a slapdash example, which his cast followed all too well. Surprising contrast: you might expect Melinda Messenger, better known for her bosom than her acting, to be an embarrassment as the Genie. She carried all before her in the best possible way, establishing excellent audience rapport and not at all fazed by the antics of Davro and her colleagues. Whereas Patsy Kensit, who has at least a little stage form, could not even stand up straight, let alone deliver her lines straight, in the parallel role at Richmond. The best thing about Richmond, it has to be said, was Simon Callow's obvious enjoyment of his chance to play Abanazar in the manner of Henry Irving; even so he was the least successful of my four Abanazars.
There is no design credit for Woking, which is as it should be - the costumes were drab in the extreme, the sets far from interesting. There was a lighting credit, but in spite of the presence of more lanterns than in the average West End musical they were hardly used. At least Bob Bustance did something with Richmond's more spartan rig. In both productions, the lovers were played by pleasant nonentities from children's TV and similar ghettos, who left very little impression but at least knew more about standing on a stage than the unfortunate Ms Kensit. But, oh, for the days of thigh-slapping, long-legged female principal boys, even if the last one I saw was probably Dorothy Ward at the Kingston Empire.
Dire doggerel
Wimbledon, where I broke my journeys to Old Peking with a visit to Cinderella, at least had a full-blown musical star as its Prince Charming, and John Barrowman took full command of the stage for his numbers. Richard Wilson slotted in surprisingly well, too, and knew almost all his lines. Mr Hendý s script had some of the same limited ration of jokes heard in the other two shows, and some dire doggerel which the brave Susan Hampshire managed to take in her stride. At least Wimbledon's community song was a cut above the Richmond one, with its banal lyrics and absent tune - a real challenge for the Richmond tots and pensioners. Wimbledon's jokes were in the hands of a pair of tired drag queens as the Ugly Sisters and stand-up comedian Tim Vine playing Dandini. Mr Vine's bio tells us that he holds the record for telling the most jokes in a minute; sadly, he made no record attempts here butstuck to eHendy joke book, which seems to be one of those excruciating kids' volumes with most of its pages missing ("Are you aViking?" - "Why?" - "You've a face like a Norse!"). What lifted Wimbledon way above its First Family rivals was its production values, with terrific, glittering sets and costumes from panto doyen Terry Parsons, and lighting from a proper designer, Nick Richings. Director Peter Duncan, too, led his cast from the front as Buttons, generating tons of audience goodwill.
Farting panda
No shortage of production values at the Old Vic, either, but some clever economising, with John Napier resuscitating his Peter Hall blue box and filling it with some delightful 3D draperies. David Hersey did the lighting, too, though most of it came from the follow spots (something else Sir Peter would have liked). Nor audience goodwill, though from a very different audience. I counted three children, a shame when Bille Brown had gone to some lengths to write a children's show. Only towards the end did he play shamelessly to the largely gay audience, when plot was cast aside for la McKellen to do a (very good) Dietrich number. He, the superbly oily Roger Allam and the engagingly modest Frances Barber all gave thoroughly professional performances, to raise this Aladdin above the average. A novelty: Gareth Valentine's bigger band providing an atmospheric soundtrack, though the songs were as poor as in the other shows - including the one by Elton John.
A surprising number of the same old themes turned up in an otherwise very fresh Aladdin at Greenwich. A great addition was Ping Pong, a farting panda who appeared first as a small puppet, and grew to well nigh take over the show. Fiona Laird's cast of unknowns (apart from old hand Brian Protheroe) acted better than the scattering of TV presenters elsewhere and included a Princess Jasmine who really could sing. The tots, too, were real spectacle-wearing kids, not dance school Barbies with names like Sapphire and Tanicia. But there again were the threeon-a-bench routine with the ghost/mummy, the mass rendering of "Amarillo", the Catherine Tate catchphrase, and even some ominously Hendy-ish jokes.
Memo to next year's pantomime producers: More risk-taking, please. More gags and newer ones, more and better songs, better sets. Oh, and bring back Principal Boys in tights - preferably girls.