Review: SLEEPING BEAUTY, The Bridge House Theatre

Pantos remain a crucial, unique corner of British theatre’s ecosystem, the big colourful posters, the big gaudy wigs, the big houses, twice, even three times, a day. But there’s a perceptible weakness in the genre evident halfway through the third decade of the 21st century. The Saturday evening sketch shows that regularly featured men grotesquely made up as women (straight men in drag were everywhere in the 70s and 80s), the Sunday afternoon Carry Ons with their relentless rat-a-tat-tat of innuendo, the folk memories of music hall and working men’s clubs - all are gone. The question is whether pantomime can become sustainable with those roots cut away.

The town centre shows feature stars with name recognition, impressive special effects and more marketing effort than is expended from January to November. Other venues have gone for family shows, long on sentimental storylines, short on transgressive chaos. And some theatres continue programming with barely an acknowledgement of the season. Some might harrumph and say “Good!”; others might project the consequent absence of income over the next five years attendant on curtailing the festive fare and find a different word.

BWW ventured to deepest Penge to see a traditional fringe panto at a theatre that enjoys a strong reputation for “getting it” to test the temperature.

The first thing one notices in the two rows on three sides of a thrust stage of a room above a pub, are a few children and even a babe-in-arms - that and the 6.30pm curtain. It’s not the demographic of The Almeida for Cat On a Hot Tin Roof on Tuesday. There’s a liveliness in the air and little point in asking punters to turn their phones off, though the oldies are a little more respectful than some. It’s an early lesson that one must go with the flow in these things, short of weighing in to a punch-up in the aisles. Multiplied from 50 to 1000, I did wonder how front-of-house staff cope with what one might charitably refer to as public high spirits. 

Video! These days, there’s always video, usually in the hyper-contrasted colours of video games, but that heightened reality takes us to a space not of this world, where normal rules don’t apply. As is immediately evident with the appearance of Brendan Matthew as Dirty Gertie, a traditional Dame, a seaside postcard come to life, breaking the fourth wall and ad libbing ad er… nauseum. It’s what the people want and they love it - well, aside from one or two puzzled faces, but they learn.

Cue an er… hurricane of fart jokes, a Good Fairy / Beauty (Georgina Mae Haley), a villainous fairy (Stefani Ariza with her crow called Sheryl, natch) and writer/director Luke Adamson as the much put-upon Willy Wetlettuce. There’s room for the traditional story (not quite sidestepping some of the far too topical issues concerning consent, but this is Pantoland, so it’s okay - sort of), a patter song and a baking scene that could have been even more anarchic, but, mercifully, wasn’t, even for those who all but donned their coats for protection.

There’s a few modern references to raise an extra giggle or two and contemporary songs that would probably benefit from singing more aligned with musical theatre belting to bring out the emotion, but they were all well-received. Roll in some dreadful puns, a joke or two that would shame a Christmas cracker and some U certificate double entendres and there you have it. 

Some, including me, would suggest that two hours 20 minutes for a show like this is a bit too stretched, but panto-punters like to get value for money, and they certainly get that here. Will they come back next year? Probably, as Christmas is nothing if not a time to “do what we did last year”.

And panto itself? Its closest cousin in theatre is probably the musical which respects its traditions, but has moved on since Hamilton and Frozen opened the door to a new vibe that appeals beyond the older, whiter demographic to reflect changing social mores. Can panto, whose narrative conventions are more rigid than any other genre, do the same thing? Perhaps. While we gleefully scream “It’s behind you!” and wallow in the comfort of its history, we should also, with a little more seriousness, ask panto to look for what lies in front of it too.             

Sleeping Beauty at The Bridge House Theatre until 30 December

Photo image: Bridge House Theatre

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