Turbans and belly buttons ... Disney’s latest is a navel revue!
PANTO season has begun early this year with the arrival of Aladdin in the West End. It’s only June but we already have lamp-rubbing, pops of smoke, plasticky romance and a magic carpet (more a magic mattress) which floats around like a flying saucer.
This is a no- expenses- spared stage version of the 1992 kiddies’ cartoon film. The backdrops and costumes are as madly colourful as the acting is two-dimensional. Welcome to Planet Disney – spangles, sequins, soupy storyline.
Schmaltzy songs, we got ‘em, not least the film’s ‘A Whole New World’, long a favourite with little girls. The whole thing is more saccharine than a shedload of Sweetex. Sub-teens will lap it up and I suspect hen parties may also find it a hoot – particularly the muscular pecs of Dean John-Wilson’s Aladdin. Phwoarr, what a cleavage!
Although the music is depressingly bland, designer Bob Crowley comes up with a series of amusingly over-the-top sets. The cave where Aladdin finds the lamp is lined with gold. Imagine the Royal Albert Hall wallpapered with gilt Bacofoil. Casey Nicholaw’s choreography is efficient and incorporates scimitars and turbans and several dimple-deep belly buttons – you could almost call this a navel revue.
Streamers burst into the auditorium. There is certainly spectacle, even if the heart remains unengaged. The American producers plainly realised that a British stage treatment required something slightly saltier than mere duplication of the cartoon.
They have injected a modicum of panto- style self-mockery. The master of ceremonies is Trevor Dion Nicholas as the genie and he certainly gives it full welly. Fiddling in one of his pyjama-trouser-pockets for his lamp, he comes up, instead, with a Union Jack umbrella. Mr Nicholas is the best thing in the evening.
The first half hour is frenetic to the point of shouty. At times it was hard to hear the words, the actors were shrieking so hard. Handsome Aladdin steals a loaf – ‘a guy’s gotta eat,’ says Middlesbrough-born Mr John-Wilson in a Disney accent.
Enter the baddies, vizier Jafar and his pepperpot sidekick Iago (Don Gallagher and a rather good Peter Howe). Mr Gallagher, equipped with a cobra-head stick, has perfected a Vincent Pricestyle evil laugh. Characterless glamour is supplied by Jade Ewen as Princess Jasmine. On Monday night, when I saw it, the streets outside were packed for a moving tribute to the dead of Orlando. Seldom has a musical felt more detached from reality. But look, it’s Disney, not Chekhov. It’s pink and white, with little between. It’s cynical, saleable, palpable pap and I suspect it will make a fortune.