BOOOOOOO! Panto is back and in Stockport, that means the Rat has landed.
Not just any old rat, either, but Brian Capron, who as soap super-villain Richard Hillman, took Coronation Street to a darker place.
Rumour has it that Brian is quite a nice chap, but once you’ve cut a swathe through the characters on Britain’s greatest-ever TV series, he is kind of stuck with being the bad guy.
He camps it up and vamps it up as King Rat, with a dastardly mwoo-ha-ha here and a switch of a scaly tail there, to the delight of the hissing, cat-calling kids, just grateful for a slice of that most abnormal of Christmas normalities, the British pantomime.
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You know the script by now. The nasty old Rat has designs on over-running London with his horde of - strangely - heavy metal-loving rodents, but he has to contend with the Cockney-accented Fairy of the Bells, who has recruited fresh-faced, straight-laced young wannabe millionaire Dick Whittngton (Tyler Sargent).
Dick teams up with the show-stealing Tommy, a somersaulting, cartwheeliing cat - played by former British gymnastics champ Maddison Kimber - to try to win the heart of the lovely alderman’s daughter Alice Fitzwarren (Becky Bennett), make his fortune, and rid London of the Rat’s dark magic.
The Plaza itself is always one of the stars of the show, its gorgeous art deco surroundings, army of proud, dedicated volunteer staff and the pre-panto festive music from the restored organ.
And while it does not have the big set-piece special effects of the expensive Manchester shows, the Plaza revels in being more homely and intimate, with Idle Jack (Bradley Thompson) and Dame Sarah Suet (Richard Aucott) doing their best to eke laughs out of a pretty flat script.
There is no messing with tradition here - our eponymous hero is very much the dull straight man, helped by the pure-hearted Alice, hardly a feminist icon for our time.
The costumes are outrageously dazzling, the Extravaganza Dancers all smiles and shimmies, and by the end, they had the Stockport kids literally dancing in the aisles.
After the traumas of the last two years, that alone was a scene to steal your heart.
