Janine Duvitski Archives - The Real Chrisparkle

Just short of two years since I booked the tickets – they do say good things are worth waiting for but that kinda takes the biscuit – eight of us finally managed to get up to Sheffield for one of the year’s most important traditions – the Sheffield panto. There is no better way to end/start the year (delete as appropriate), and at Christmas time the Lyceum Sheffield is the only theatre that comes close to the Palladium for that expectant buzz in the lobby and bar, and that frisson of excitement in the auditorium as the show is about to begin. If they could capture that thrill and bottle it, well, they’d have a bottle-full of really good thrill.

Having missed out on the joys of Damian’s Pop-up Panto last year, it was great to see a proper panto again with a recognisable story, a good fairy, two young lovers, a kid’s gang leader, an evil baddie and a bloke in a dress. Even before it starts, the band members, tucked away in the side boxes, exude massive energy as they bash out the traditional Bring Me Sunshine, and from the moment National Treasure (I’ve decided that’s what she is, deny it at your peril) Janine Duvitski came on stage as Fairy Moonbeam and gave us a proper excited Ello?! we knew we were in for a treat.

Ben Thornton was a great favourite as court jester Jangles, who not only required us to shout Hiya Jangles! every time we met but also insisted on the secret gang sign, a noisy wibbly-wobbly flickering hand behind your head which I’d swear was an homage to Lithuanian Eurovision band The Roop (Google them). Hannah Everest was a charming Beauty (that’s Princess Caroline) and together she and Dominic Sibanda as the Prince (that’s Prince Michael of Moravia Oooooh) made an excellent romantic couple. One of the most entertaining aspects of the whole show was watching Mr Sibanda try to keep a straight face during nearly every interaction he had with nearly every cast member. He certainly had a lot of fun up there.

Lucas Rush was a brilliant baddie in the form of Carabosse, reinvented as a gender-fluid bad fairy who wouldn’t have looked out of place in the Rocky Horror Show or Cabaret. Fantastic interaction with the audience, really goading us to jeer at him (we obliged) and he mocked us for it (very well). It was a delightful twist that at the end of the show Carabosse seeks our forgiveness and ends up in a relationship with Nurse Nellie, explaining well, it is the 15^th century you know.

But it wouldn’t be the Sheffield panto without our Damian. This is Mr Williams’ fourteenth year of playing the Dame at the Lyceum, but every year he brings fresh, larger than life, inventive fun to the role. Nurse Nellie’s boyfriend for the night was Jordan in the second row, who becomes the butt of some predictable, some not-so-predictable jokes throughout the evening. He is given the job of choosing the moment when he can press a button that will set off a huge confetti explosion; and in a truly hilarious coup-de-theatre, the explosion goes off just as we’re mourning the apparent death of the Princess, thus annihilating the pathos and gloom of the moment in a stroke that’s part Ayckbourn and part sheer theatrical anarchy. Poor Jordan.

I also particularly enjoyed the schoolroom scene, where Carabosse turns up as a teenage mother, and there was a brilliant joke about Robbie Williams selling insurance; and the introduction of the mystic Golden Axe which will enable the Prince to fight his way to the Princess’ bedchamber – only it’s hidden away so he has to use his Silver Chopper instead.

It’s a laugh a minute – more often that in fact, your face hurts from laughter from start to finish. We’ve already booked for Jack and the Beanstalk next December. Have you?

Production photos by Pamela Raith

Five Alive Let Theatre Thrive!

For the fourth year, the Palladium have resurrected their old tradition of a Christmas Panto season, and, financially speaking, it must be one of their wisest moves in decades. Oldies like me remember the halcyon days of Cilla Black and Jimmy Tarbuck, Ronnie Corbett and Terry Scott gracing the stage with their wickedly brilliant panto performances – and that kind of experience creates a love for theatre that (hopefully) never goes away. So impressed by our enthusiasm for the Palladium panto were they, that our friends the Squire of Sidcup and the Wise Woman of Wembley brought his dad (the Grand Old Duke of Kent) as a Christmas treat. And why not?

This year Qdos pulled out even more of all the stops for Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Goldilocks – you might ask – as a panto? Good question. Despite all the adult humour, variety acts and in-jokes of the past few years, the Palladium pantomime has always been exactly that – a panto. However, this year…. the astute amongst you will have twigged that Goldilocks isn’t really a panto. A fairy tale, maybe; but the two beasts aren’t necessarily the same. This year’s yuletide Palladium offering is many things: circus, magic, burlesque, song-and-dance, an all-round very funny and extraordinarily vivid Vegas-style extravaganza that I thoroughly enjoyed. But panto – it isn’t. For the surprisingly large number of kids in the audience for the Saturday night after Christmas – their parents obviously didn’t get the memo – there would have been very little of the spoken word element of the show that they would have understood.

Of course, there’s always a comic frisson of the naughty bits that the adults get that the kids don’t. But in this case, the balance was so extreme that the only things the children would have got out of it would be the visuals. A very enjoyable magic act, great costumes, music and lighting, some (and I stress some) of Paul Zerdin’s ventriloquist act and – without question the best couple of minutes in the show – the amazing performance by Peter Pavlov and his troupe in the Dome of Speed – four motor bike riders criss-crossing each other in the dark that made your hair stand on end and elicited the best applause of the night. And maybe that’s enough to satisfy the kids – I’m not a parent. But I am glad not to have had to answer a string of very inquisitive questions on the way home from the theatre.

Putting all that aside, it’s a great show, with Palladium Perennial Julian Clary reigning supreme as the Ringmaster – you’ll already have supplied all your own jokes, but his are a good deal filthier. If you’re in need of a double entendre, you’ll always find Julian popping up with a warm hand upon his entrance. He’s a joyous presence, totally in command of the audience, a guarantee of a good night out before you even consider the contributions of the rest of the cast. In the role of arch-baddie (which is as near as you get to pantomime in this show) is Paul O’Grady as Baron von Savage, assuming malice with effortless ease; to the extent that maybe you’d like to see him put a little more effort in, although that really isn’t his style.

Other recidivist performers are Nigel Havers as Daddy Bear, who’s perfected a nice portly swagger, Paul Zerdin, whose vent skills are terrific (although I really didn’t go for the baby puppet at all) and Gary Wilmot as Dame Betty Barnum, in charge of the local circus. I always look forward to seeing Mr Wilmot, because he’s a master song-and-dance man, and by all accounts this year’s patter song is a-ma-zing, but his voice wasn’t holding out well enough during our performance for him to tackle it, which was abitofashame.

New blood arrived in the form of the irrepressibly nice Matt Baker, who played the irrepressibly nice Joey the Clown. If they ever want to revive Barnum, he should be front of the queue of contenders, because his high-wire skills are superb. Janine Duvitski’s Mummy Bear is Straight Outta Benidorm, with her implications of BDSM nights of ecstasy; shame she wasn’t given a chance to be a little more three-dimensional. Lauren Stroud’s Baby Bear wins the runner-up Best Scene Award for her fantastic 42^nd Street routine (I did tell you it wasn’t really a panto), and Sophie Isaacs is a suitably charming Goldilocks.

What it doesn’t have: It’s Behind You! Oh No It Isn’t! A Ghost – Where? – and jokes for the kids. What it does have: daredevil motorbike riders, Julian Clary’s innuendos, an incredible orchestra, costumes and lighting, and Nigel Havers making a joke about Prince Andrew. We all laughed our heads off. And although I might have preferred something just a tad more traditional, it’s the Palladium panto, dammit, so what are you complaining about?