Lloyd Evans
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Some of the humour has dated. When Cap’n Dennis hears that a handsome young officer ‘will be attached to your section’, he pouts knowingly and murmurs, ‘Mm! Heaven!’ A thousand Julian Clary quips have taken the edge off that moment, I’m afraid. Russell Beale is a joy to watch and he plays Dennis with a freshness and brio that almost convince you this is the only role he’s ever taken. Sophiya Haque is sublime as the tender-hearted hooker Black Velvet, a mixed-race cutie from Calcutta who dreams of emigrating to England, which she imagines as a gentlemanly paradise where well-tailored chaps stroll down Pall Mall every afternoon to take luncheon in their club.
The commanding officer, Major Flack (Angus Wright, on good form), is a preachy Christian lunatic who embodies the ‘sword-and-bible’ spirit of the British Empire. The sentiment he represents was in its death throes in 1948. By 1977 it was extinct. So for all the show’s exuberance and bonhomie, it can’t help showing its age. You’d have to be 70 to recall the early postwar years from personal experience. And though Peter Nichols’s script is a consummate piece of dramatic artistry, the show feels more like a cult Soho hit than a solid West End smash.
Off to the Hackney Empire for Dick Whittington and his Cat. Appropriate that panto time falls during the season of giving. It’s about giving bad scripts the benefit of the doubt, giving TV has-beens a brief moment in the limelight, and giving yourself a break by oiling the pistons with a pint of sherry-punch before you hit the show. A leading designer once told me that panto meant ‘taking every crap idea I’ve had all year and putting it on stage’.
No such unprofessionalism at Hackney. In-house writer Susie McKenna usually sets the show in the local borough (always pronounced ‘Hacker-nay’, for some reason) but this year she lets her script roam freely between London and Yorkshire, where Dick was born. The leads are played by the charismatic Joanna Riding as Dick, and by Steve Elias as Sarah, a wisecracking transvestite cook. Not all the gags are aimed at kiddies. ‘I lost my wife last year,’ says Elias, with a tear in his eye. ‘What a card game that was!’
The only disappointment is the Cat itself, which looks like a Victorian bed-bolster knitted by someone’s granny. To make up for it there’s an unfeasibly large gorilla, named King Kong, sporting a woolly pelt and a goofy face. Despite his massive bulk, Kong skips around the stage on his knuckles with the nimble athleticism of a dressage horse. Physical adroitness in a creature the size of a wardrobe is hilariously funny. Give that ape its own dressing-room. My six-year-old son and his friend Leo surveyed the show with watchful scepticism. ‘Any good?’ I asked them at the end. ‘Brilliant,’ they piped in unison. I should add that Leo spent the first half nudging me and asking, ‘When’s the break?’ through mouthfuls of crisps. But the show certainly quelled their aggressive spirits for three hours and I sat beside them basking in their absorption and feeding them artery-clogging snacks. I enjoyed every minute of this show because it wisely aims at the tastes of grown-ups. Outside, hit by the freezing air, the boys set about strangling each other and went home in tears on the bus.
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