It’s showtime!
PAUL BAILEY previews the most promising pantos and plays for theatre-goers young and old
Of all the Christmas entertainments on offer this year, the one that really intrigues me is The Little Match
Girl, by the greatest of all children’s storytellers, Hans Christian Andersen, adapted for the stage by Joel Horwood and directed by Emma Rice, the new boss at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.
It promises an evening of ‘magic, puppetry and dark music’ in that most beguiling of London’s theatrical venues, the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. Children and grandchildren who have never experienced a play in a candlelit auditorium should be taken to this as a special treat. It’s in performance from 24th November until 22nd January.
Black Beauty, an adaptation of Anna Sewell’s novel, will be at Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre throughout December, closing on Christmas Eve. It is set in a stable, with actors telling the tale of the beautiful horse that won through against the odds. I hope this proves to be a success, because the book asks important questions about everyday morality, even as it tells a compelling story.
Meanwhile, the London Palladium will stage its first pantomime in almost three decades. Not surprisingly, the cast of Cinderella is composed of names familiar to devotees of popular television. Paul O’grady, the inventor of the waspish Scouse femme fatale Lily Savage, will dispense with his lovability as a dog rescuer when he appears as the Wicked Stepmother, while Julian Clary promises to be the campest Dandini ever. Count Arthur Strong, master of the mumbled malapropism, will be playing that perennially interesting rogue Baron Hardup of Hardup Hall, and Nigel Havers is the Lord Chamberlain. Amanda Holden, the determinedly radiant judge on the ever-embarrassing
Britain’s Got Talent, is ready to test what acting skills she possesses as the Fairy Godmother. The roles of the Ugly Sisters – renamed the Wicked Stepsisters – will be taken by Suzie Chard and Wendy Somerville. I can only express my disappointment that Nigel Farage and Michael Gove are otherwise engaged. There is a rumour that their comic timing will not be wasted, however – in December 2017, or perhaps 2018, they will be invited to play the Brokers’ Men for a delighted nation. These, surely, are the parts they were born to play. Cinderella runs from 10th December to 15th January.
Since J M Barrie’s Peter Pan came out of copyright, it has attracted a host of adaptors keen to damage its delicate structure. David Hasselhoff, or The Hoff as he is known to his fans, is giving his all-american Captain Hook at the New Theatre in Cardiff from 10th December to 8th January. Mike Doyle will play Mrs Smee, an insignificant character now blown up into a supporting part as a pantomime dame. At the Plaza in Stockport, John Altman, who achieved fame as Nick Cotton, Dot Cotton’s villainous son, in Eastenders, looks set to be a terrifying Hook, from 2nd December to 8th January. Publicity photographs show him smiling manically, as pirates are keen to do.
In recent years, Matthew Kelly – who once hosted the terminally awful TV series Stars in Their Eyes – has proved himself as a resourceful and intelligent actor. From 9th December to 15th January, he will appear as Sarah the Cook in Dick Whittington at the New Wimbledon Theatre. He is in the honourable tradition of the butch dame, whose femininity is of a rather blokeish nature. I think he will shave off his beard and moustache in the interests of authenticity, but there’s no reason that he should. Sarah’s startling hairiness could be explained by her once having swallowed the wrong pill. But no matter, the one certain thing is that he will be very funny.
I can recommend the adaptation of E Nesbit’s The Railway Children at King’s Cross Station until 8th January, having seen it a while ago at Waterloo. I can’t believe that it has changed much since then. Raymond Briggs’s The
Snowman is at the Peacock Theatre in London again, deservedly (23rd November to 1st January). At the Crescent Theatre in Birmingham, Dickens’s imperishable A Christmas
Carol will be given its annual airing (3rd to17th December). Perhaps Scrooge will be played as a Brexiteer. There are going to be a lot of Brexit jokes in pantomimes this season.