Here’s a proper London panto full of wit and great songs, led by a winning, perky Dick in the shape of Sèverine Howell-Meri.
If the story didn’t occasionally stray into vagueness it would be damn near perfect. Even so, there’s enough verve and invention in John Haidar’s production to please all ages.
Young Whittington is desperate to escape the laddish banter of Romford for London, where the streets are lined with lattes, ice cream and avocados, but also knee deep in rats.
On his trek west he teams up with Nathaniel (Harry Jardine), a cat who wants to be a dog and who performs a fiendishly funny rap that rhymes “curveball” with “furball”.
The city promises acceptance, reinvention and the prospect of love with the panto dame’s daughter, Alice, who reveals she is not all she seems in the song Thereby Hangs my Tail. Tom Giles’s suave King Rat is a property developer who builds palaces no one lives in, Dick’s predecessor as mayor a blonde blusterer who eventually decides to spend more time with “one of my families”.
If only writers David Watson and Robert Hyman brought to the narrative the same rigour they do to the songs and the jokes. Some plot-strands are poorly thought out, particularly in the meandering second half.
Never mind. On the plus side there’s a forest of sarcastic trees, a dragon built of rubbish, fabulous costumes for Vedi Roy’s dame and a gleefully acceptable level of audience participation.
Above all, there’s Howell-Meri, selling the songs and the gags with a sunny lack of guile.
Until Sat 11 Jan (020 8534 0310, stratfordeast.com)
