Bristol Hippodrome
“I said there would be some surprises” says John Bishop before the pre-curtain call raucous audience singalong. “But I bet you weren’t expecting me to recite Shakespeare and snog Gandalf?”
Obligatory explanation for people from Abroad: a Pantomime is a Christmas theatrical entertainment, loosely following the plot of a popular fairy tale but incorporating copious corny jokes, song-and-dance routines, vaudevillian slapstick and a minimum of one custard pie in a face. Audiences are contractually required to boo the villains and cheer the heroes, volubly warn the good guys when there is a baddie behind them and shout out "Oh yes you did!" should anyone on stage ever claim that they didn't. For reasons lost in the midsts of theatrical convention, there is always a comedic older woman played by a man in ridiculous drag, and very often a male hero played by a glamorous lady actor. As an art-form, it is really not entirely sensible.
Tonight, the aforementioned Mr Bishop came on stage in civvies before the show started and informed us that although we’d passed Easter it was still a panto and we were encouraged to join in, shout out, and generally go wild. There has been some stuff in the papers about people being ejected from musicals for singing along and joining in inappropriately, so this was reassuring.
I don't think I've ever seen Mother Goose before but it is just about possible to discern the contours of the original fairy story in tonight’s extravaganza. Poor Mother Goose (Sir Ian McKellen, no less) is gifted a golden-egg laying fowl by a malignant fairy. She becomes rich and famous (“a global mega-star”) but falls out with Father Goose (John Bishop) and their idiot son Jack. (“He’s not a bit stupid!” “No, he’s very stupid!”) So she gives up the wealth, goes home, and lives happily ever after.
But any actual fairy tale takes second position to slapstick, topical references and extremely dirty jokes. For no very good reason, in scene two, everyone retires to the kitchen to bake a cake, with predictably messy results. (“What should I stir it with?” “Oh, use your head!”) When Oscar Conlon-Morrey (Jack) slightly overdoes the instructions to “grease the bottom” everyone corpses uncontrollably. They’ve been doing the show since December and are coming to the end of the run. Bishop missed some recent shows following the death of his mother; and the sense that we are watching a theatrical family who love what they are doing is palpable. There's no pantomime horse, but there is a large puppet donkey. It has a prosthesis because Mother Goose has argued the back leg off it. “That’s not a donkey, it’s a llama”. “Yes, but it identifies as a donkey.” There's a greedy pig called Boris. And there's quite a large amount of good-natured filth. I wouldn't say that it was un-suitable for kids, but unaccompanied grown ups were distinctly in the majority. It is suggested that perhaps Mother Goose should try to get some smaller animals for her animal sanctuary. “I’d like a cockatoo” winks Sir Ian.
McKellen is, as you would expect, wonderful. You can kind of tell that he’s an Act-ore with a capital A where John Bishop is a mere stand up comedian, but they gel into a perfect double act. Sireen's punchlines are dry and straight faced, where Bishop is perpetually amused both by his own jokes and everyone else's. Sireen plays the dame with his own Lancashire accent (as he did for Estragon some years ago): one has the sense that he is treating Mother Goose as he would any serious acting role, but then laughing at the fact that he's playing a panto dane and laughing at the fact that he's laughing at it.
The whole evening is, indeed, quite meta. When Camilla Parker Bowles (you had to be there) describes the audience as “oiks” Mrs Goose thinks she has said “orcs” and has flashbacks. The evil fairy has an impressive bullwhip which she cracks every time she comes onto the stage. By act two it's completely out of sync with the orchestra pit. Sir Ian is by no means a bad hoofer but there is some suspicion that the taps in the tap dancing routine are coming more from the percussion section than from his actual feet.
So far, so extremely silly. But in the second half, something rather surprising starts to happen.
The evil whip-cracking fairy (Karen Mavundukure) will grant Mother Goose's greatest wish if she hands over the goose-that-lays-the-golden egg. Mother Goose's greatest wish is to be a "global megastar". This leads into a heartfelt monologue about how “she” went to the pantomime as a young “girl” and realised that “she” wanted more than anything to be up on the stage; and a touching little vignette of Tomorrow from Annie. Act II begins with an hysterical montage in which Mother Goose's dreams come true: she appears, in quick succession, as the host of the Oscars, a cheer-leader at the World Cup, and a fashion model on the London catwalk. Up to this point, Sir Ian has adopted the classic Panto Dame look — a kind of absurd fancy-dress that you couldn't possibly mistake for an actual lady. But he now goes full drag queen. For a man on the wrong side of 80, he actually comes across as pretty glamourous. And for the rest of the story he reverts to comparatively sensible old-lady clothes. As if he’s no longer a Dame but a comic female role that happens to be being played by a bloke.
The King of the Geese wants to boil Mother Goose in oil because of what she did to the golden egg layer but she is given a chance to defend herself. She says that she happens to know a very good speech for the occasion. And bugger me if she doesn’t perform the Quality Of Mercy Is Not Strained, entirely (if I can put it like that) straight. Everyone is set free. Mother Goose apologises to Father Goose for abandoning him when she got rich. And there's a reconciliation scene in which Mr John Bishop from the Worst Season Of Doctor Who recites Sonnet Eighteen. In his own Scouse accent. Totally deadpan. Somewhere along the line it stops being about Father Goose making up with Mother Goose and becomes a love letter to Ian McKellen and the theatre. "So long lives this, and this gives life to thee". And then they kiss, unapologetically.
I mean, I am not saying that anyone would be stupid enough to find they had something in their eye at the end of a sodding panto, but honestly, damn.
Not that there is any sense of the thing taking itself seriously or being an artistic take on panto or anything like that. (Does anyone now remember Peter Nichols’ Poppy?) Someone described it as being “post-panto” but even that goes too far. We still have to shout “Hi Jack!” when the young lad comes on stage, (which causes consternation when they are on the aeroplane to Gooseland). Giant inflatable footballs are thrown into the audience. Confetti is showered and fireworks go off. The evil fairy is magicked into a good fairy. (“What do the boys and girls have to do to make the good fairy appear?” “Er…they don’t know, because I forgot to tell them at the beginning.”) The King of the Geese (Adam Brown) is monumentally camp. Jack and Jill are chased around the stage by a spook, largely in order to do the “I don’t want to be grabbed by the ghosties” joke. And Mother and Father goose renew their wedding vows in My Fair Lady level white hats.
Count me a born-again Pantomime Fan. It isn’t incongruous to recite Shakespeare at the end of Mother Goose; it’s entirely appropriate. We absolutely know that we’re looking at an elderly gay man in a frock kissing a comedian who's married with three kids; and we’re simultaneously pleased that Mrs Goose and Mr Goose have made it up and are going back to their home for orphan animals and if that isn’t what theatre is all about I don’t know what is. That and really terrible jokes.
Which reminds me. The fairy tale Mother Goose was almost certainly not based on an American woman named Elizabeth Goose; but for the purposes of tonight’s performance, Ian McKellen's character is called Caroline Goose.
Can you guess which plattyjubes adjacent Neil Diamond track was chosen for the final singalong?
Oh yes you can….
Hi,
I'm Andrew.
I am trying very hard to be a semi-professional writer and have taken the leap of faith of down-sizing my day job.
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