Is there anything better you could watch on Boxing Day evening than a pantomime? Oh yes there is. Not to worry, I'd already set the video set to record The Office, so I was off to watch my 7-year-old niece starring in Norfolk's premier festive entertainment instead. Apparently there were some other semi-famous people in the show as well, although I never used to watch Bread so it was hard to be certain.
I was duly summoned to the front row of the upper circle to watch my niece take her very first faltering steps towards an Equity card. There she was milling around the streets of old Peking, folding clothes in Widow Twankey's laundry and parading sparkly treasure around the genie's cave. She was dead good, but then as an uncle I have to say that. She's also on first name terms with all the stars and a useful source of backstage gossip (last night Wishee Washee's trousers split on stage, so I hear). Thanks to her I was attending my first panto for almost 30 years.
Pantomime is a unique British experience. Nothing else mixes comedy, myth, romance and high camp with quite the same magic. If your career is on the way up, panto is something to fill in that worrying winter gap between Butlins summer seasons. If your career is on the way down, panto is a celebrity safety net, one last greasepaint refuge where you can still revel in audience adulation. Pantomime is also a very provincial artform. Nobody pantos in central London (hell, even Bonnie Langford can't get any closer than Guildford), whereas Norwich packs the audience in for a month.
From the poster outside you might have thought that the stars of the show would be the two actors from Bread and Corrie but oh no, the true stars of any panto are the dame and principal boy. Richard Gauntlett(Cannon And Ball, Time And The Rani, Beauty And The Beast) played Widow Twankey with camp aplomb, parading a series of outrageous dresses and winning over the crowd. Rikki Jay(Talking Telephone Numbers, Hamford County Primary School Nativity Play) as Wishee Washee combined an infectious cheeky grin with total audience rapport. The two of them wrote the show from scratch, ensured they got all the best lines and threw in deft ad-libs as required. Aladdin and his princess were merely sidelined romantic decoration. Perfect.
Highlights of the show included an acrobatic tumbling display, the lucky programme raffle and the finest Red Arrows formation display you'll ever see below 100ft. What's more there was actually a plot, never too far below the inventive silliness. Panto may not be high culture, but its enduring seasonal success provides provincial theatre with the essential financial lifeblood to survive. Long may it last. Me, I might even be tempted back next year, even if I don't get to hang around inside the stage door afterwards and accompany the star home.
