★★★★★

“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

★★★★★

“Basically, you’ve just got to see it to believe it.”

Daniel Clarkson and Jefferson Turner (thereinafter referred to as Dan and Jeff) take on the task of presenting six-and-a-half popular pantomimes in the space of eighty minutes. They’ve been doing it for some years now, so are probably getting quite adept. Just to show off, immediately after the interval they summarise the first act (a mere four pantomimes) in three minutes. ‘Potted Potted Panto’ they call it. They don’t stop there – they then recap (donning their ‘recap caps’) in one minute. Yes, you guessed: ‘Potted Potted Potted Panto’. It goes on. Until breathlessly they somehow revert to the task in hand. This is their modus operandi. They are constantly having to rein each other in, pulling themselves away from the many digressions and bizarre, surreal, outlandish embellishments they have piled thick and fast onto the traditional stories. It is a miracle that they are condensed at all, what with the sheer number of laugh-out-loud moments packed in.

Dan and Jeff are a slick duo. Vaudevillian, but a touch more risqué. Morecambe and Wise but with the more modern, anarchic chaos of Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson. Deep down we know that this show has been rehearsed to a tee, but it feels like a rampage. One that is forever teetering on the verge of collapse. The popular titles they have chosen are ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’, ‘Dick Whittington’, ‘Snow White’, ‘Sleeping Beauty’, ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Aladdin’. Ah, yes, the ones we know and love. Except that after witnessing Dan and Jeff’s interpretation we cease to know them – but love them even more. At Dan’s insistence, ‘A Christmas Carol’ is shoehorned in (hilariously mashed up with ‘Aladdin’ – I shall say nothing!). Strictly speaking, Dickens’ Victorian classic is not a pantomime. Jeff feels the need to point this out. Neither is the Nativity. Nor the John Lewis Christmas advert, nor the Doctor Who Christmas Special.

Dan concedes. And so, the roller coaster ride begins. Caught in the cyclone of activity are dozens of costume changes that more or less keep up with the plot twists. Our perceptions of the fairy tales we grew up with are not just stretched but snapped clean in two. We are in a world where giant moose lay golden eggs and Dick Whittington conquers London in his shiny green hotpants and thigh high boots. Where fairy God-chickens wave their magic baguettes and dinosaurs wander into Sleeping Beauty’s bramble-thick garden. Where the ghost of Christmas Present is summoned from a genie’s lamp… I could go on and list every bizarre twist, joke, reference, visual pun, innuendo, satirical zeitgeist. But it would take all day. And you wouldn’t believe it anyway so there’s no such thing as a spoiler for this show. I could hand you the script word for word and you’d be none the wiser. Basically, you’ve just got to see it to believe it.

Written by the pair (along with Richard Hurst) it is, despite all evidence to the contrary, an exceedingly witty and intelligent creation. The intricate balancing act of the language and the humour aims straight for the ‘grown ups’ and the ‘little ones’ simultaneously without any confusion being whipped up in the crossfire. It is difficult to decipher who is enjoying it the most as the laughter from each generation vies for supremacy in the auditorium. Similarly, it is a joy to witness the performers having just as much of a ball as the audience. Even when they are corpsing they are in command. They don’t really need it, but aid comes intermittently in the shape of stage manager, Sammy Johnson, who adopts a couple of idiosyncratic characters of his own. And Marie-Claire Wood matches their comic flair wordlessly, before stunning us with her beautiful singing voice.

If I were to put down on paper what this show is about (oh, hang on – that’s exactly what I’m doing) I’d be wary about letting anybody read it. I don’t think it would make much sense. What would make less sense, though, would be to miss this sensational, seasonal show. Even if the show itself makes no sense. But that’s the beauty of it. ‘Tis the season to be silly. Or is it jolly? Anyway, “Potted Panto” is jolly silly. ‘Potted’ – according to the dictionary – has more than one meaning: 1. Shortened. 2. Intoxicated. Well – that says it all.

Tag Archives: Simon Scullion

POTTED PANTO

★★★★★

Wilton’s Music Hall

POTTED PANTO

Wilton’s Music Hall

★★★★★

“This is the only panto you’ll ever need. It’s the festive season in a nutshell.”