Wicked .. . and so are the prices
PROFESSIONALISM and panto don’t really belong together, if you ask me. But you’ve got to hand it to the Palladium’s now annual Christmas show: it certainly is slick.
So slick, in fact, that this year — with Dawn French making her panto debut alongside old hand Julian Clary — it sometimes feels more like a talent show for people who’ve already made it. You could call it The Strictly Xmas Factor.
Ms French is fabulous as the wicked Queen Dragonella. Strutting about in black sequins and towering headgear she’s like a deluded elf with an improbable libido.
She keeps a narrow eye on the audience to ensure they’re focused on her assets, while she focuses her own amorous demands on rising star Charlie Stemp, as the show’s himbo Prince Harry.
This is French at her finest: flirty, flighty, slightly cross and marvellously bossy. Julian Clary jokes that she’s only there to pay a tax bill and French laughs this off like a car failing to start on a cold and frosty morning.
As the Man In The Mirror,
Snow White (London Palladium) Verdict: Slick, saccharine and a little bit smutty ★★★✩✩
Clary is there to model a dizzying range of ludicrous panto frocks, from a porcupine of glass shards to a Christmas tree. Most of all, though, he’s in it for the innuendo, which comes thick and fast (much of it smutty, be warned).
Close behind is Nigel Havers — the running joke is that he’s Clary’s understudy — and he gets a good ribbing from the camp master for being the ‘ poor man’s Jeremy Irons’.
The children are more likely to fall for ventriloquist Paul Zerdin and his squeaky-voiced puppet, whose solo routine wins the longest sigh.
Gary Wilmot’s turn as the omni-beaming panto-dame Nora Crumble is topped by his stupefying litany of almost all the people who’ve been on stage at the Palladium — to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Modern Major General. Strictly veterans Vincent and Flavia, do a tango and flamenco with well-rehearsed raunch. As Snow White, Danielle Hope is a veteran of talent shows (she won Over The Rainbow in 2010); here, she is sweeter than candy cane. Meanwhile, Karen Bruce’s choreography keeps the stage swirling in Busby pompom style. No routine is left unturned or unmilked and it’s all good fun. But it’s not priced like a local panto: £50 for bucket seats in the gods; £150 to fly business in the stalls. Nice work if you can get it, but I’d much rather keep my panto real and local.