Vice is exceptionally nice in the Lyric’s festive show, with Vikki Stone’s entertainingly rascally Abanazer taking centre stage over the dame. Stone so cleverly rubs the audience up the right way with her camp wickedness that you can’t help but take a shine to her.
Not that virtue in any way proves dull in Joel Horwood’s script, set in the kingdom of Hammerboosh, where poor people are not allowed to look at the Emperor One Per Cent (Dale Rapley) and his daughter, Jasmine (Allyson Ava-Brown), and the palace boasts signs warning that it is situated in a “zero poverty zone”.
Jasmine turns out to have a mind of her own – still an unusual quality for a pantomime heroine. Karl Queensborough’s Aladdin is a likable lad and a bit of scaredycat when it comes to heights, which doesn’t bode well for the flying carpet sequence, and his relationship with brother Wishy Washy (Arthur McBain) is nicely played out. Particularly as Wishy Washy proves that being slightly dim doesn’t mean you can’t have a lightbulb idea when it really matters.
Pantos get written months in advance, and it’s clear that unlike The Simpsons’ writers, Horwood did not predict the election of Donald Trump. Nor Brexit, the disappearance of the austerity-loving George Osborne from power, and the tragic Bake Off debacle. Some of the topical references feel slightly shoehorned into the script. The baddie’s full name is Nigel David Donald Theresa Boris Abanazer. Mind you, Oliver Townsend’s set design, which always walks the line between panto tack and real magic, makes the emperor’s palace more full of bling than Trump Tower. The cave of treasure looks like a cross between Supermarket Sweep and a scratchcard.
Ellen McDougall’s production doesn’t always keep the energy levels buoyant but it has some nice touches, including some sly nods to theatrical convention. When a stage manager comes on to remove a prop we are assured that if we keep perfectly still she won’t be able to see us. The cast work the audience really well and the audience respond, although the slapstick scene using washing machines and soap suds is a mite laboured.
The sidelining of the dame is something of a loss. James Doherty’s Widow Twankey, former owner of the Pants a Manger launderette, which has gone into fairy liquidation, twirls around in some sublimely tacky outfits, courtesy of Jean Chan, and has fun with the man-eating stereotype. (“I’m all woman – and just a little bit more.”) But it’s a low-key performance that sometimes throws away the dafter jokes, including the ones hailing from the stone age.
Malinda Parris is a terrific Genie of the Lamp, but it’s Stone who steals the show as a green-faced Abanazer who is evil and inept in equal measure. When Abanazer turns up sprouting hair like a purple toilet brush, clad in skin-tight plastic, and insists on wooing the princess by playing his flute, you can’t help feel sorry for him even as you boo loudly.
- At the Lyric Hammersmith until 7 January. Box office: 020-8741 6850.
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