Given that Dallas was at its peak in the 1980s, you have to be a moderately mature theatregoer to appreciate the casting of Linda Gray, who played JR’s alcoholic spouse, in this year’s Wimbledon panto.
But although tiny tots may be puzzled to see the Fairy Godmother constantly swigging from a hip flask, the former Sue Ellen negotiates the rhyming couplets with aplomb and, when required to do a bit of light acting, announces: “If this doesn’t get me a part in Downton, I don’t know what will.”
Even if the Fairy Godmother is not an unduly taxing role, Gray’s presence pervades every aspect of Eric Potts’s script. Cinderella’s dad is now the ailing head of Hardup Oil, Southfork and the Ewings are in there somewhere and, at the finale, the cast all sport pink Texan stetsons. But that is in keeping with the spirit of a “meta-panto”: a self-referential affair that starts with a filmed puff for the genre and shows the immaculately preserved star stepping out of her limo to ascend the theatre’s steps.
But, in the end, panto is about the ability to engage with the audience and two of the cast do this spectacularly well. Tim Vine is a cheerfully comic, rather than pathetic, Buttons who hurls gags at us in great profusion, acts as a choric commentator (asked how everything could have gone so wrong, he replies: “I suppose you could start with the script”) and, the night I was there, treated an unduly demonstrative kid, rashly invited on stage, with exemplary courtesy. The other standout performer is Wayne Sleep who, as Dandini, exhibits a puckishly mischievous presence and, with the crazy logic for which pantomime is famous, at one point executes a nimble-footed rendering of Putting on the Ritz.
The show, smoothly directed by Ian Talbot, is strong on production values. As the Ugly Sisters, Matthew Kelly and Matthew Rixon – in real life father and son – wear a variety of bizarre costumes including hats that look like a tilted fried egg and an overfilled fruit bowl. As is so often in Wimbledon pantos, there is a 3D ghost scene where we don special glasses to see bug-eyed phantoms and sinister spiders menacing us and the characters on stage.
But, while this is a panto for the modern age in its knowing acknowledgment of film and television, it seems at its best when it resorts to storytelling and getting the kids to scream their heads off.
• Until 11 January. Box office: 0844 871 7646
