Review: Sheffield Lyceum panto Snow White
The plot’s as loose as the stockings around Nurse Nellie’s ankles, the glitter-encrusted scenery as sparkling as the festive lights above Fargate, and the slapstick script is Christmas crackers.
And men of Sheffield, beware!
Once the roving audience-cam is finished with you the Magnet of Love is on the lookout… and if you’re caught in its forcefield the price is high: public humiliation from a self-proclaimed fat bloke in a dress.
It can all mean only one thing: pantomime season’s here again - oh, yes it is! - and this one is a stonker.
Snow White (though does it even matter which story the show ostensibly follows each year?) is quite possibly the Lyceum’s most breathtaking panto yet, with an A-list surprise in its Magic Mirror and the wonderfully irreverent Damian Williams at the helm as dame for a 17th incredible year.
But, hang on a minute - where is Nurse Nellie?
She’s drinking cocktails in The Head of Steam pub, of course! Cue mad dash on camera across town, crashing into the auditorium larger than life, with a Henry hoover for a headdress, a mop for hair, and an outlandish skirt stitched together from cloth dusters.
Why? Why not!
It doesn’t do to question the crazy logic of this marvellously madcap production, which runs across Christmas and New Year until January 5th next year.
Starring alongside Williams is TV, film and stage actor Marc Pickering, memorable as baddie ‘Luke Backinanger’ two years ago in Jack and the Beanstalk, even more lovably hilarious this time as the Wicked Queen’s henchman Herman, Baron von Badapple.
Aside from being tasked with doing away with Snow White with a wobbling rubber dagger that couldn’t slice butter, Herman has an inexplicable dream: to be Elton John (don't ask) - and to help him we, the audience, must join in with the La-La-La-La-Laaaa chorus of Crocodile Rock. Repeatedly.
Herman has a mute identical twin, meanwhile - oh, do keep up - and, would you believe it, it’s villainous Viper from Gladiators!
Viper takes his role as the strong but silent type seriously by barely uttering a word, and - though it would have been funnier had he reeled off an entire Shakespearian monologue once he finally does speak - he is the amiable butt (along with Sheffield Wednesday, Sheffield United, women of Sheffield, and the whole of Rotherham) of countless jokes, and the excuse for a Gladiators battle (“Contenders, ready!”) complete with giant foam hand, which has the kids in the audience howling.
That’s the beauty of pantomime, its all-ages appeal, and in a rollicking two-and-a-half hour run time that manages to feel like minutes there really is something for everyone.
There’s Catherine Tyldesley, best known to viewers of Corrie as Eva Price, vamping it up with her poisoned apple as Snow White’s murderous nemesis the Wicked Queen.
There are songs from 50 years ago alongside Lady Gaga’s hit from just this summer, and groan-worthy ba-dum-tish gags grandad will remember from when rock was young.
Sheffield’s own leading man Matthew Croke, who spent two years as Aladdin in London, is a modern-minded Prince Charming who confirms consent before kissing the sleeping Snow White (Aoife Kenny fresh from two years in the West End cast of Frozen). Their ‘romance’ is as wooden as you want it to be, almost an irrelevant aside from the bonkers goings-on around them.
Meanwhile the joy just spills off the stage, with a sensational live band loudly blasting out the tunes, led energetically on keys by musical director Jimmy ‘the most enthusiastic man in showbusiness’ Harrison, who this year is elevated from bit part to proper role, with proper lines, on stage.
It’s hard to pick a highlight in a show of such spectacular proportions, though the setpiece segments stand out.
There’s the annual Ghost Gag bench (we’ll have to do it again then, won’t we, wooh!) and, though the wheelbarrow of puns is gone this year, in its place is a genius routine involving a button that speaks thoughts in the lyrics of song. It’s laugh-out-loud hilarious, and Williams holds the audience in the palm of his hand.
When the Wicked Queen soars cackling into the rafters, belting out I Will Survive amid a fog of dry ice - so much it’s a Christmas miracle Row A can breathe, let alone see - it’s West End level magic.
And nothing can beat Williams trussed up as a giant bottle of Henderson’s Relish, a foil-encased pie for a skirt, his face stuck and mumbling incoherently into the neck of the bottle.
It’s a musical, a play, and two hours of stand-up comedy, all rolled into one psychedelic, stupendous spectacular - and Christmas just wouldn’t be Christmas without it.
