BOOM! BOOM!
Basil Brush and a stellar comedy cast prove that Brexit isn’t the only pantomime in town . . .
BREXIT, Jeremy Corbyn, poor Mrs May, Boris Johnson, the new Primark in Bracknell, lightfingered Slough-ites and genetically modified food (‘last night I had the best leg of salmon!’) are just some of the comic targets in this year’s pantomime at Windsor’s Theatre Royal.
This is a home-grown effort rather than one of those mass-produced Qdos Entertainment jobs, and is all the better for that. It stars that foxy fellow Basil Brush. Within minutes of being wheeled on stage atop his box, Basil is telling the boys and girls a naughty rhyme: Mary had a little lamb/ And tied it to a pylon. 10,000 volts went up its bum/ And turned its wool to nylon.
Ah, British panto, boom boom. There is nothing quite like it: gaudy, daft, subversive, corny. Filthy entertainment for all the family!
And it hauls in the crowds like nothing else and financially sustains regional houses like the lovely Theatre Royal, whose manager himself started in the business as a 12-year-old child actor at the Windsor panto.
Look at the audience’s faces at panto, both children and adults. They gleam. It is not just the laughter and the ‘behind yous!’ and the singalongs and the flying loo-rolls that make these seasonal outings so special. It is the stalactite of tradition. Families book the same seats year after year and slowly the children become parents, and in time grandparents, and they get a kick out of watching their youngsters squirm with horror when Queen Rat (a sporting Anita Harris) swaggers on stage to hiss and glower at the kiddies she says she can not abide.
Some aesthetes find all this terribly vulgar. Silly old them.
EnTER Sarah the Cook (Steven Blakeley, who also co-wrote the show), with two plastic colanders for a bra. He is in his tenth year as Windsor’s panto dame.
‘I’m as hard to get rid of as Theresa May,’ he says. A threeyear-old to my left squealed with laughter at that. They must teach politics in Berkshire kindergartens. Basil is introduced as ‘the greatest rat-catcher in Europe, and next year out of Europe’. Cheers. And then boos when he mentions the rotten Customs Union. This is old-fashioned panto, exuberantly done. Former Radio 1 DJ Mike Read is wonderfully stiff as Alderman Fitzwarren, whose lovely daughter Alice (Megan Jones) swoons for Dick (A.J. Jenks).
Marti Webb is in the show playing the goodie-goodie fairy — always such a dull part — until mid-December, when Anne Hegerty will return from ITV’s celebrity jungle show.
But the real stars are Basil, such a spry old sceptic, and the easy duo of Mr Blakeley’s dame and Kevin Cruise as Idle Jack. They pitch the innuendo just out of reach of the youngsters and they have an easy rapport with their loyal public. Great fun, and theatre magic.
THE Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Don Quixote tries some panto-style audience participation.
Comedian Rufus Hound, playing Quixote’s servant Sancho Panza, wanders into the stalls, gets the audience to do some physical jerks and generally tickles things along. It is less toe-curling than it sounds, though I was glad not to be one of those picked on by the merciless Hound.
Cervantes’ novel, about a dotty old man who aims to restore the age of chivalry and goes riding off in a suit of armour to do gallant deeds, is basically one of noble failure. It may be harsh to say that this show itself is a noble flop. Angus Jackson’s direction has moments of quirky invention, some spirited character acting and an inspiring central performance from David Threlfall as the deluded Don.
But the plot is limited and the evening could do with losing at least 20 minutes.
Dick Whittington (Theatre Royal, Windsor) Verdict: Old-fashioned panto joy Don Quixote (Garrick Theatre) Verdict: Watch out for the Hound ★★★★✩ ★★★✩✩