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We had had to cancel a visit to Pantoland at the London Palladium before Christmas as one of our party had Covid (and we were worried the rest of us might get it from the plague victims of old London), but we risked it today (because this isn’t such a bad time to get it) and went to the Wednesday matinee.
I was surprised to see that there were hardly any children in the audience apart from our two and most of the crowd were in their late middle age. But they were presumably there to see the headliner Donny Osmond. It was more of a variety show than a panto as it turned out and Julian Clary told us early doors that there would be no plot and no villains. So I am glad this wasn’t the only panto we went to this year - and I have to say that the Welwyn panto was a better day out (for the kids especially), though there was glitz and glamour and TV stars in this one. Julian was funny and Phoebe loved Paul Zerdin and Sam (who is arguably a better ventriloquist than me) and Nigel Havers was a game fall guy and Gary Wilmot did an impressive memory feat singing a song with the name of every London Underground station in it.
The cast were impressively committed though (Clary can affect boredom at everything so he’s covered) especially to the bits where things “went wrongâ€, which were to experienced eyes were clearly put in the script as audiences love it. Osmond acted particularly well when he supposedly accidentally turned off the animatronic ventriloquist dummy. But would he really not know how to turn it on by this stage of the run? He seemed to love Zerdin’s ad-libs and be surprised by them. So well done to him. I know it was all set up, but even I am left with a scintilla of doubt. Was that special moment just for us?
Of course it fucking wasn’t (which would be a much better thing to shout out than “Oh no, it wasn’t).
But I’d have preferred a plot, however loose. The kids had an OK time, but Ernie got bored by the second half and was more interested in the walking stick of the old lady behind us, which had fairy lights on it. Luckily the couple seemed charmed by his attention.
The stage was framed by posters of pantos from the past. Previous stars included Cilla Black, Arthur Askey, Cliff Richard and amazingly Peter Sellars. It did have the side effect of making you wish you could have seen some of these line-ups, though I’d also really like to see how the casts had got on backstage. I wonder how Cliff Richard and Arthur Askey got on.
Though there were huge stars in some of those old pantos, I think the pick of the bunch and the one I’d have loved to see most was the one with Cannon and Ball, John Inman, Barbara Windsor, Cheryl Baker, Derek Griffiths, Marti Webb, Joey from Bread and Rod Hull and Emu. Wall to wall stars and I just feel in my bones that that would have been quite a show and make for the most interesting backstage shenanigans and feuds and could be made into a play by Terry Johnson.
Pantos are big payers for their stars and by January 5th, one suspects, they have probably had enough of them and might be going through the motions a little bit. This cast were very professional and put on a good show, though not one that was exactly my cup of tea. I bet Rod Hull or Terry Scott got fucked off though and resented audiences and were just waiting for their bank accounts to fill up with cash.
