There is no London venue like the Empire for seeing a panto. For a start, the whole wedding cake interior looks as if it has come straight out of pantoland. Then, of course, there is the audience. The Hackney audience has one thing on its mind: having a good time. It is fiercely partisan (villains in Empire pantos tend to hail from Bethnal Green), consumes large quantities of food and drink throughout, laughs loudly at the limpest joke and is gloriously vocal in a way that demonstrates the remarkable plasticity of the English language: "Oh yes they is," came the confident roar of the crowd during one exchange.
In these circumstances the producers could hardly go wrong. Although this is a halfway decent show, it's not the one this crowd really deserve. While it tries to be bang up to date with its prince with his mobile and its endless references to adult TV shows (a real bore for small children), it is a curiously old-fashioned affair that seems to have modelled itself on Saturday Night at the London Palladium, circa 1963.
In many ways, of course, pantomime has become the last bastion of light entertainment. It is only once a year at Christmas that the sequinned dresses and big, cheesy grins are wheeled out. It is a celebration of camp. But it is very easy for the whole thing to become tawdry - and it does here. The coach that takes Cinders to the ball has a pretty winged horse but the transformation scene itself is threadbare and the palace has gone entirely disco. This is the most indecorous royal ball ever: Cinderella has barely been introduced when she thrusts her hand up the prince's bum. Even the humour displays a lot of camp's ambivalence between sympathy and hostility for female sexuality.
The performances are uneven with too many of the cast simply relying on their TV personas. But Clive Rowe and Tony Whittle as ugly sisters Lucinda and Lavinia, better known as Loo and Lav, are fun and Sharon D Clarke brings a warm-hearted presence to the Fairy Godmother - "just call me FG". Otherwise, it is the audience who are working hard to ensure you have a good time, not the cast.
Box office: 020 8985 2424. Until January 9
