Pantomime

Mother Goose Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow

** FORGET any hint of spit and sawdust – Mother Goose’s circus is a vision of pale lemon frocks, smocks and pantaloons that look as if they had stepped out of the pages of a Victorian picturebook about the Bolshoi ballet.

The Big Top, too, is pastel pretty, with a live band neatly housed in an upper gallery.

You would want to run away to any circus that was as swish as the one Robin Peoples has designed for the final year BA acting students who sing and dance, turn cartwheels and juggle in this oddly polite version of writer Alan McHugh’s and director Alasdair Hawthorn’s Mother Goose.

Polite? Aren’t pantos meant to be a raucous, vulgar thumbing of the nose (and other parts) at the Establishment?

Well, like the ugly sisters and Cinderella’s slipper, not every cast is a perfect fit for purposeful rudery and bish!bash!bosh! tomfoolery.

As for singing out loud... the chorus do it with gusto, but not all of the main players are in tune with the pop songs that the children in the audience have off pat.

Those kids, alongside their parents, seem to have a good time at the show nonetheless.

They boo at the swaggering devil in red, Diavolo (Lorn Macdonald) who has a fiendish cackle and a catchphrase – “You’re all going DOWN!” – to match.

He also has a side-kick, but Rascalio is too inept to be evil.

Hamish Riddle makes him a lovable numpty with a hint of the ridiculous wimp.

What of Mother Goose? Nebli Basani’s Dame drags up a treat, even before the Lady Gaga transformation, but high camp needs low comedy, not just a deep voice.

There’s effort galore on-stage just not “tip-top” as the irritating Fairy Fortuna insists.