But this panto’s major draw remains its magnificent regulars: Nigel Havers, Gary Wilmot, Paul Zerdin and Julian Clary as, yes, seaman Smee. Clary really is a marvel, whether dispensing filthy innuendo (“Have you ever been press-ganged on the poop deck?”), or mercilessly skewering his castmates. Louis Gaunt’s expositional duties as Pan are mocked (“It’s plot, plot, plot with him”), as is Wendy actress Frances Mayli McCann’s “mysterious” Scottish accent, and Havers’s recent UK tour of Private Lives in “draughty provincial theatres”.
There’s a genuine sense of danger to some of Clary’s ad libs, rare in an increasingly careful theatre culture, and we get jeopardy of another kind when he’s hoisted aloft and carried all the way up to the Palladium’s vertiginous ceiling. But he’s also capable of touching sincerity, dedicating a number to his late panto co-star, Paul O’Grady.
Excellent too is rising star Rob Madge as a quick-witted Tinkerbell, leading an energetic mash-up of I Am What I Am and Born This Way. Gaunt’s buff hero is Pan by way of Nijinsky – every entrance is a hovering jeté – while ventriloquist Zerdin impresses with a tight, pun-packed set. Gary Hind’s original songs are boringly sub-Disney, but there’s always a new distraction on the way: crocodile puppets invading the aisles or The Timbuktu Tumblers creating a human pyramid.
The production even answers the charge that there’s too little here for youngsters by inviting kids from the audience up on stage for a joyfully silly game, sweetly managed by Zerdin. A high-flying hit.
Until Jan 14. Tickets: 020 3925 2998; lwtheatres.co.uk
