My head is filled with nothing but glitter. I recognise no language other than fart jokes. The only way you can contact me now is via audience participation.
It’s been a big day: I’ve attended three weddings, defeated multiple villains, and heard more jokes about Downing Street’s cheese and wine not-a-party than Ant and Dec can fit into a whole season of I’m a Celebrity. With last Christmas spent in lockdown and festive shows pulled off the stages, I’ve been sent to overload on festive cheer by watching three pantos back to back: that’s three hapless heroes falling in love and saving the world, all in one long, loud, dizzyingly sequin-filled day.
First up is the small-scale Sleeping Beauty in Hoxton Hall, the beautiful old music hall where we’re told it’s rumoured that Princess Beauty was once kept safe as she slept. Led by Danny Charles as Nurse Nala Nigella Knickerbocker, the cast of five roll out Hackneyed London puns (thank you) and strongly evoke children’s TV presenters with their colourful dungarees and inexhaustible smiles.
Though the pace of the story sometimes lags, the show shines in the more raucous moments, as with the utter chaos of their rowdy version of 12 days of Christmas. The roof almost comes off with children’s screams of “five toilet rolls”. A hilarious mishap occurs when Mary, who turns seven on 23 December, hasn’t shown up. Thankfully, Maisie in the stalls turns six on the 28th, so we sing to her instead.
I head to my parents’ house to watch the livestream of the New Wolsey’s Jack & the Beanstalk. We were meant to take my grandma to a panto this weekend, but her care home has just gone into lockdown. To distract ourselves from thinking about what this means for when we might next meet up with her, we gather Quality Streets, tea and flapjacks for the matinee, only to run into technical difficulties. It turns out mum hasn’t updated her computer since 1995. We arrive 20 minutes late and stumble into a run of Steve Simmonds’s fast-flowing puns as Dame Dolly Durden. Immediately, this production is ruder and louder, feeling more directly designed for adults than the morning show. A rocky live band plays in the background, with the cast donning guitars over their costumes to join in. It’s a riot.
As a ridiculous giant fee-fi-fo-fums at the top of the beanstalk, the geography of our jokes moves east: “Your father said I should look for a village that needs an idiot,” says local boy Billy, played by James Haggie, “so I thought I’d try Norwich.” I’m starting to get disheartened by the amount of times I’m told “you can do better than that” when we all yell out, but we persevere and shout at the screen regardless.
The livestream is well-considered, with the multi-camera production giving us a tangible sense of the fun in the room. Smartly pre-recorded clips are inserted, showing Bessie the dancing cow strolling through Ipswich, past the town’s “mooseum” and local “cowncil”. It makes the families watching from home feel just as integral as the live audience. The show’s low-brow humour is perfect; Mum and I can’t stop cackling at the constant stream of fart gags.
For the finale, it’s down to the New Wimbledon theatre, the panto my family have gone to every year since I can remember. It’s also the site of my long-held bruise from being rejected as a child for a place in a previous panto’s ensemble. My dream of dancing with the soapstars was squashed.
This production of Dick Whittington – truly the most incomprehensible of all panto plotlines – is almost blindingly glitzy, packed to the rafters with glittering lights and fizzing pyrotechnics. Shane Richie is brilliantly cheeky with the audience, frequently falling into fits of giggles when someone fluffs a line.
With a full orchestra and enormous cast, the difference in budget between this show and Hoxton Hall’s is stark, but this sometimes works to the production’s detriment. The choreography is so slick and speedy, it feels almost formulaic, lacking some of the heart that both Hoxton’s slightly scrappier production and the New Wolsey’s raucous show had in spades. But God, the flying motorbike is cool.
By now, the stories have started to roll into one. I can barely distinguish between Sleeping Beauty climbing a beanstalk, Dick falling asleep for 100 years, and Jack fighting an army of stinking rats. The sticky sweetness of popcorn is starting to cloy. The flashing lights are leaving imprints on my brain.
Yet after more than six hours of constant razzle-dazzle, the cheer never fades. All three shows have such visceral moments of delight, and the audiences are all buzzing. There is such unbridled joy in panto, in the safety of knowing that good will triumph over evil, that friendship is one of the best things we can have and that silliness is encouraged no matter your age. But do I recommend three in one day? Oh no, I don’t.
Sleeping Beauty is at Hoxton Hall, London, until 24 December. Jack & the Beanstalk is at the New Wolsey theatre, Ipswich, and livestreamed, until 8 January. Dick Whittington is at the New Wimbledon theatre, until 2 January.
