Theatre
Pantomime incognito
Kenneth Hurren
The Exciting Adventures of Queen DonnieIla
by Brian Blackburn (Casino) On Approval by Frederick Lonsdale (Theatre Royal, Haymarket) To the casual glance, at least, pantomime is flourishing throughout the kingdom. Cinderella, the girl with the world's most unusual feet, will be spurning the below-stairs devotion of the impecunious Buttons and opting for the good life at the royal palace, in Sunderland as in Worthing. Babes will be lost in Woods from Eastbourne to Glasgow, and Jack will shin up his Beanstalk in Edinburgh as well as in Bournemouth. A dozen Dick Whittingtons will rise from humble shop lad, via a brief but dazzling career in rodent extermination, to Lord Mayor of London, from Manchester to East Grinstead — and even on ice, at the refrigerated Empire Pool, Wembley, where the story somehow incorporates, with the dottiness inseparable from this seasonal art form, "an authentic Korean wedding dance on ice." Elsewhere there are Mothers Goose, Pusses in Boots, Robinson Crusoes, Sleeping Beauties and Little Red Riding Hoods, and almost everywhere there are Aladdins. It is the familiar assortment as we have known it for generations.
Only in Central London are things different, which you may or may not regard as a significant straw in the wind. All the usual entertainments designed specifically for childreg are on hand in London (Peter Pan, Toad of TOO Hall, Winnie the Pooh, Treasure Island, Gulliver's Travels and more), but the only pantomime to be found in the West End theatre list is a production of Aladdin originally 'intended for the suburbs but booked into the New Victoria — ordinarily a cinema — to fill ' what had seemed to be an accidental gap. It is to run for only three weeks, and not until the spring equinox — which has been regarded as the minimum lifespan for a pantomime produced to the standards of sumptuosity to which London audiences are accustomed if the . backers are to see a return on their investment. It used to be a fairly safe investment, too, but last Christmas changed all that when Cinderella — ostensibly the only panto in town — folded prematurely, losing Sir Bernard Delfont and his associates a small fortune.
That is the kind of experience that would impel any impresario to reconsider the situation and what Sir Bernard could scarcely help noticing was that his Cinderella was not, in fact, the only pantomime available. There was also a show at the Palladium called Hans Andersen which ran through till October; it had substantially the same ingredients as the shows we call pantomimes, but the Palladium just called it "a musical," thus avoiding those connotations of juvenilia which, frankly, don't do a show much good once the tots get back to school. This, I suspect, is the reason why Sir Bernard is not offering a pantomime this year — or, more accurately, is not using the word 'pantomime' in relation to his presentation of The Exciting Adventures of Queen Danniella, a new Danny La Rue show which, for the moment, is described as a "family show.'' It may work, and it may be that the idea is to phase out all the nursery-time bits as soon as the holidays are over, but my guess is that it has a long, long way to go before it begins to look like an entertainment for grown-up people, and that there will have to be some pretty drastic, revisions in the pantomime pattern of the script — in comparison with which Goody Two Shoes might seem intellectually demanding — if it is ever plausibly to accommodate the voluptuously lewd female impersonations and coarse improprieties for which its star is renowned. For the present he is bogged down in the imbecilic ramifications of a plot about the nefarious designs of the wicked Duchess of Vulgaria (Moyra Fraser) on Queen Danniella's gay' little Kingdom of Entertainia, and in the more embarrassing requirements of the season which involve him in gooey cosiness with small children from the audience. These infants will
be nonplussed by impressions of dead filmstars (Marilyn Monroe, Betty Grable, Carmen Miranda) though they have at least the advantage of not knowing how bad they are, and may elsewhere be entranced by the lavish gaudiness of the staging, by the prettily amusing interlude by the Paul and Peta Page Puppets, and by the vivacious routines of some of the most fetching, decorative and willowy dancers in London, to mention only the boys.
Theatregoers of a cynical cast, are suspicious that the revival of On Approval has been brought into town at this time to take advantage of prevailing attitudes of seasonal goodwill, may be agreeably surprised by how well this Lonsdale trifle of 1927 has worn. It has to do with a wealthy and waspish widow (for whom Geraldine McEwan irrelevantly but beguilingly adopts a posture generally associated with the praying mantis) who invites a devoted suitor to spend a month at her manorial home in Scotland to assess his suitability as a husband, a doomed experiment in which another couple, similarly situated, also participate. It would be foolish to pretend that the course of events will keep you in a fever of suspense, but the dialogue has a certain spiky charm without rising to anything readily identifiable as wit. "Why should you care for me?" — "You would be wise not to encourage • me to dwell on that" is a sample of the banter, and if it is the sort of thing that amuses you, you will find it stylishly handled by the four players who are Jennie Linden, Edward Hardwicke, Edward Woodward and, as mentioned, the captivating Miss McEwan.
Ben Travers, who was writing hits contemporaneously with Lonsdale, is happily still with us at the age of eighty-nine, At a time of life when a man's interest in sexual capers could reasonably be expected to be residual at best, he has written a wise and enormously engaging comedy on the subject in The Bed Before Yesterday, which is about what might be called the autumn awakening of a middle-aged lady to the pleasurable lusts of the flesh. Joan Plowright's performance, as true as it is funny, tempers enthusiasm with understanding, and she is admirably partnered by John Moffatt as her wilting spouse. The play is probably better than those the author wrote in what has hitherto been supposed to be his heyday: We can run a check on that when the National Theatre shortly revives his 1928 piece, Plunder.
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