POTTED PANTO
Wilton’s Music Hall
★★★★★
“This is the only panto you’ll ever need. It’s the festive season in a nutshell.”
If you are a pantomime completist, you can easily knock off a handy six – or is it seven? – in one night at Wilton’s Music Hall and have a fabulous time doing so.
The comic duo of Dan and Jeff bring their quick-fire Potted Panto back to the gorgeously distressed venue cramming in the festive cheer with the pluck and ingenuity of a turkey stuffer faced with a big bag of giblets.
In goes Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. Here comes a whistlestop Jack and the Beanstalk and an abbreviated Snow White. The pair – aided and abetted by costume changes, cut corners, puppets and belly laughs – rattle through the traditional canon in a slick and practised 80 minutes, and that includes fast and furious recaps.
Daniel Clarkson and Jeff Turner are good at this. Really good. They’ve been “potting” works since 2005 beginning with Harry Potter (Potted Potter, geddit?) and moving on to pirates and Sherlock Holmes. Potted Panto was first shown at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2010 and transferred to the West End where it was Olivier nominated. The show arrived at Wilton’s last year and looks like becoming a regular fixture – with tickets selling fast. This is nothing but good news. It deserves to become an East End tradition.
At times the cheerful conspiratorial exuberance tips over from stage show to party time, with the fourth wall not just broken but blown up. That accounts for the enthusiastic embrace for the “3D” section where everyone joins in a rambunctious carriage chase through a haunted forest.
There’s topical stuff for the adults – Donald Trump, Gregg Wallace – and enough wee-wee and poo gags to have the kids slamming their hands to their mouths in naughty giggles.
Dan Clarkson, the tall one, plays the part of the cheeky troublemaker with puckish glee, while harassed Jeff, the short one, tries to keep the whole show on the road. Co-writer Richard Hurst also directs and manages to co-ordinate chaos to such an effective degree he should run for government.
All this is helped immeasurably by the special magic of Wilton’s. With its echoes of Dickensian Christmases Past, especially with Tiny Tim limping across the stage, the whole place has the cosiness and irrepressible delight of those childhood December nights that were almost too exciting to bear.
Remember, if any other Christmas show offers you just the one storyline, you’ve been short-changed. This is the only panto you’ll ever need.
It’s the festive season in a nutshell.
POTTED PANTO at Wilton’s Music Hall
Reviewed on 6th December 2024
by Giles Broadbent
Photography by Geraint Lewis
Previous Potted Panto reviews:
POTTED PANTO | ★★★★★ | WILTON’S MUSIC HALL | December 2023
POTTED PANTO | ★★★★★ | APOLLO THEATRE | December 2022
POTTED PANTO
POTTED PANTO
Click here to see our Recommended Shows page
