Thursday, December 23, 2004
Panto at the Old Vic
Tuesday night Marc and I saw Ian McKellen in the pantomime Aladdin at the Old Vic Theatre. Pantomime is big around Christmas time with several theatres offering fairly decent productions with soap stars featuring in lead roles, but only the Old Vic had Ian McKellen in it and as Widow Twanky he gave it class and high camp... Its an experience to go to any pantomime, but when the cast was this good, it was even more fun to boo the bad guy, and cheer the hero and shout "Oh no it isn't!".
This version was written by Billie Brown and had all sorts of thoroughly modern references such as Aladdin eating deep fried mars bars (since he was played by a Scotsman) and reference to a magic "blunkett" that gets you where you want to go all that little bit more faster... Plus the various assorted theatre in-jokes and gay references peppered throughout... Nowadays it is all family entertainment...
The set was still causing problems on Tuesday night and the actors had to improvise to make the cave where the lamp is found... but the show was fast paced and full of spectacle that even a few hiccups just added to the fun
The genie's arrival caused a little stir since he wore very tight short pants that showed off his rather athletic legs. The adult part of the audience roared and wolf whistled... Some of the roaring even came from women (being London it was that sort of audience). The actor playing the genie seemed taken aback at one point which seemed to only encourage the audience to taunt him even more. Actually there was a lot of muscle and leg on display, so much so that when the chorus boys in tight sequin shorts appeared in the second half accompanying Widow Twanky in her club act we all just expected it to be so... By then we had already seen McKellen in a fluro yellow fur coat and dressed as an ABBA girl so anything was possible...
Christmas entertainment surely can't get much better than this...
Tuesday night Marc and I saw Ian McKellen in the pantomime Aladdin at the Old Vic Theatre. Pantomime is big around Christmas time with several theatres offering fairly decent productions with soap stars featuring in lead roles, but only the Old Vic had Ian McKellen in it and as Widow Twanky he gave it class and high camp... Its an experience to go to any pantomime, but when the cast was this good, it was even more fun to boo the bad guy, and cheer the hero and shout "Oh no it isn't!".
This version was written by Billie Brown and had all sorts of thoroughly modern references such as Aladdin eating deep fried mars bars (since he was played by a Scotsman) and reference to a magic "blunkett" that gets you where you want to go all that little bit more faster... Plus the various assorted theatre in-jokes and gay references peppered throughout... Nowadays it is all family entertainment...
The set was still causing problems on Tuesday night and the actors had to improvise to make the cave where the lamp is found... but the show was fast paced and full of spectacle that even a few hiccups just added to the fun
The genie's arrival caused a little stir since he wore very tight short pants that showed off his rather athletic legs. The adult part of the audience roared and wolf whistled... Some of the roaring even came from women (being London it was that sort of audience). The actor playing the genie seemed taken aback at one point which seemed to only encourage the audience to taunt him even more. Actually there was a lot of muscle and leg on display, so much so that when the chorus boys in tight sequin shorts appeared in the second half accompanying Widow Twanky in her club act we all just expected it to be so... By then we had already seen McKellen in a fluro yellow fur coat and dressed as an ABBA girl so anything was possible...
Christmas entertainment surely can't get much better than this...
