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 15th 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