The Transmitter takes time out from the real world to enjoy some seasonal fare at the Fairfield Halls booing the baddies and singing along with everyone else at this year’s panto Aladdin
What a complete hoot! The show starts with the opening bars of Bring Me Sunshine, and the cast and musicians certainly do just that, temporarily whisking the audience away from the cold reality of Eurozone, and warming everyone up with a sprinkling of cheer this chilly December. Or rather, not a sprinkling but a deluge, as the jokes couldn’t have come much thicker and faster in this production by husband and wife panto team Paul Hendy and Emily Wood, directed by Paul Tate.
The story, as with all pantomimes, is pretty incidental. It’s really just an excuse to cram in as many puns as possible (completed each time with drumroll and cymbal crash), as many sparkly colourful costumes as the cast have time to change in and out of (Widow Twankey’s crazy outfits were fabulous, natch) some goodies to cheer, a baddie to boo and a fairy-tale romance that we all know at the beginning will end happily ever after.
The puns, of course, are quite wonderfully awful: ‘I just saw Michael J Fox at the garden centre! I knew it was him he had his back to the fuchsias!’ but children and usually-sensible grown adults alike wallowed in the guilty pleasure of each one. Although a lot of the jokes, visual or vocal, were a little beyond the younger members of the audience, there’s slapstick aplenty and our junior Transmitter Team especially enjoyed an anarchic version of The Twelve Days of Christmas (‘Fiii-ve cus-tard pies!’) and the obligatory ‘It’s behind you!’ moment featuring a few jolly choruses of Always look on the bright side of life (and some not-very-scary lumbering Egyptian mummies).
And have I mentioned yet that lovely Larry Lamb, playing the villainous Abanazer with a fantastic sense of fun, sings! Oh yes he does! A personal highlight. Larry leads a great cast, all of whom look as if they are loving every minute of it, which is both heartwarming and endearing. There’s singing (we particularly liked their Peking laundry-based version of 500 Miles, yes really) and there’s dancing for Strictly fans, as well as fun interpretations of panto favourites the Genie (in this case, a 70s-style Jamaican love-god) and the Spirit (like, straight out of TOWIE, innit). We loved Widow Twankey (the brilliant Quinn Patrick) and Wishee Washee (the splendidly fast talking Joe Tracini) who were the master and mistress of audience participation, sharing the joy and inviting us all to laugh, shout, join in and have a great time. And guess what? We did.
Aladdin will be at the Fairfield Halls until 2 Jan 2012
Box Office 020 8688 9291
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