They call the Palladium Christmas pantomime “the glitziest show in town”, which basically means “most expensive”. I feel moved to point out that I wasn’t paying; I went with my friend, who is a theatre critic. It’s anyone’s guess which sounds the most boastful: “I’m so well-connected, I get to go to a panto for free” or “I’m so incredibly rich I could blow 200 quid on a theatre ticket”. Let’s say they are both as bad as each other.
It was Robin Hood, starring Jane McDonald, Julian Clary and Nigel Havers, but the first convention of panto is that the story doesn’t really exist. They’re looking to create a spectacle that reminds you a bit of a dream you once had about the story. If ever there is anything on the stage and you can’t for the life of you figure out the point of it – an incredibly long and repetitive song, for instance, in which people nearly hit each other in the face with blunt objects – it’s because there is a convention. Person shamed in the audience, typically for being bald? Call-and-response demands from the audience? A sudden shower of delicious sweets, probably Freddos? These are the building blocks of the form, which is the only one the English have ever invented, said my friend. I said: “What about … ?” and he said: “Don’t say morris dancing”, and I was actually going to say cockfighting, but only because I had already been overexposed to Clary and Havers.
