Review: Sir Ian McKellen in Mother Goose at the Lyceum, Sheffield

Distinguished acting veteran Sir Ian McKellen, 84 this summer, dressed in drag all legs and lipstick, like the deranged love child of Dame Edna and Nora Batty, delivering Shakespeare’s quality of mercy speech from The Merchant of Venice… to the Liverpudlian comic John Bishop. In heels. And a hat.

Surreal it may be. But for that moment alone – deep in among the bawdy jokes, cream cakes, and incessant innuendo – the audience is stilled and silent. You could hear a goose feather drop.

Forget King Lear and Hamlet, and Macbeth with Judi Dench. Forget Laurence Olivier awards and Golden Globe nominations for Richard III. Never mind Magneto in X-Men or the wizard Gandalf in Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.

Tonight Sir Ian McKellen is… Caroline Goose, the matronly matriarch Mother Goose, resplendent with Les Dawson bosom nudges, hairnets and handbags.

Beside him John Bishop is effortless as his straight man foil and salt-of-the-earth husband Vic.

The pantomime, home to roost in Sheffield until Saturday and on tour around the UK until April, is theatrical gold.

The Lyceum is full to its gilded rafters. Tudor Square is abuzz with anticipation. Everybody in the audience is eager to throw themselves into the expectations of the evening – booing, hissing, clapping along, hollering ‘he’s behind you’ and ‘oh, yes it was’ – immersed in the childlike excitement of a night of vaudeville music hall madness with a thespian legend as our lead.

The show, authored by Jonathan Harvey who has written over 300 episodes of Coronation Street, may have debuted in Brighton and Christmased in London but it feels very northern at its heart.

McKellen, Lancashire born, his accent still warm and round, talks of watching his own first panto as a boy in Burnley and wanting to be up on the stage, creating the magic, not sitting in the audience looking at it. The show programme is full of the cast’s childhood photos and memories of their own first theatre shows and the impact those experiences made. (It seems poignant that opening night in Sheffield came on the same day that, just 40 miles away in Oldham, it was announced the town’s stunning Coliseum Theatre is to close forever. The beautiful 140-year-old venue, where stars like Sarah Lancashire got their early breaks and where generations of Oldham children have been introduced to the power of panto and the joy of theatre, has had its Arts Council funding withdrawn.)

The show begins quietly. John Bishop comes on stage in his civvies to give us a little talk about the background to the show and reassure us not to worry: Ian is here, and most definitely not dead.

And so the scene is set for an outlandish two-and-a-half hours of raucous, riotous irreverence and debauchery.

The story is set in a defunct Debenhams where Mother Goose, Vic, and their dopey son Jack – Doncaster-born Oscar Conlon-Morrey – run a sanctuary for a menagerie of animal waifs and strays. They are totally skint and about to be turfed out by the energy company – ‘the energy company!’ we all must for some reason shout in response – until Cilla Quack, the goose that lays the golden eggs, flutters in to save the day.

The role was originally cast for Mel Giedroyc, but she withdrew for personal reasons before rehearsals began, and West End veteran Anna-Jane Casey is unflappable in her place.

The garish cartoon colour costumes (Sir Ian is trussed up variously like a Tower of London beefeater, Ginger Spice Geri Halliwell, and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady) the beautiful handpainted scenery, and the set piece scenes, are at once nostalgic and visually hilarious.

There’s an uproarious baking scene, some lipstick smearing snogging, damnation of the Tories’ economic disasters and ‘Cruella’ Braverman, reference to covid and constant camp send-ups, and relentless reminders about the fairies in the company.

It’s perhaps for the best the audience is made up mostly of adults curious to see Sir Ian (and a school party whose teachers must have been worrying if this was suitable junior school fodder really). Luckily most of the rudeness, indeed most of the script, will go over the heads of any little ones.

“I like a cockatoo,” muses McKellen dreamy-eyed – one of a barrage of tired but trusty double entendres about greasing the bottom, tossing in my sleep, enjoying a big stick of Liverpool rock, and tucking himself into a genius upright upholstered bed for a ménage a trois with Bishop and their goose.

Some of the jokes don’t quite travel – reference outside London to Julian Clary’s rival West End panto could perhaps do with a rewrite for the tour – and even the gags about Boris Johnson at a party seem a little out of date already.

But Sir Ian brings it back to brilliance every time he’s on, tap-dancing with the energy of a dame half his age, duetting, feigning geriatric confusion that he’s back in Lord of the Rings, slipping in to Gandalf, muttering darkly about orcs and having to apologise.

Act 1 ends unforgettably with Sir I stripping off to just his pink silk French knickers to wade through magical mist into a lake of dreams – and Act 2 is even better. There are stronger songs, allowing the powerhouse voices of the supporting cast to shine, more audience participation, some flying inflatable footballs, a Sweet Caroline singalong, the chance to catch handfuls of thrown sweets.

It’s crackers, as camp as Christmas – in February. And it’s a joyous celebration of the pull not just of panto but the magic of live theatre.