It’s so fun to be a kid again! From the get go, the evil magician Abanazar (Tomuri Spicer with his great voice) has us audience members booing and hissing. An interactive play? Slapstick comedy? Puns? I’m delighted! This is pantomime.  

This magician’s ring, buffed, summons him a minor genie (the smart Ovita Beres) who enables him to locate the major genie (the fizzing Zac Henry), the Genie of the Lamp, and ergo ridiculous wealth. Genies speak in rhyme, and by some enchantment they draw all the characters into rhyme, providing a guess-the-rhyme (you won’t) contrast to the regular dialogue.

Costumier Quentin Frances adds to the fun. In classic pantomime fashion, as easily as a dream morphs, flowing capes and jewelled turbans shimmer alongside satin Chinese pantaloons, bling ‘from Farmers’ and British constabulary uniforms. Oh, and a flapper dress makes only more fetching Aladdin’s mother, the Widow Twankey (Campbell Thomson), replete with black feather-boa.

I admire Wishee Washee (April McMillan-Perkins ) in his futile but splendid struggle for command of his panda Nobby (Ocean Manutulila), always coming away the worse for wear. Sphere is a gifted mime – opening doors, receiving blows, jazzing up intermediate jokes.

I would love to attend when more children are in the audience, to enjoy their reactions. Yet while we are mostly adults tonight, we too relish groaning, heckling and cheering. In fact seeing the childlike way in which Aladdin (Patricia Pantleon) and Princess Jasmine (Katherine Osborn) strike up a friendship – “Will you be my friend?”—sincerely moves me. Falling in love, they harmonize a duet.

My toddler has never seen anything like this. He laughs out at villagers folk dancing and remains transfixed the whole two hours.

Set Designer Sophie Welvaert pairs lavish details – rugs, satin cushions and lotus-topped pillars – with the set’s principal pieces: two large revolving panels. These panels supply, respectively, the Emperor’s unassuming city in Peking, blue Willow Pattern general Chinese ambience and an Egyptian desert.

Jasmine’s father, the Emperor (Matt Brennan), recalls the Lemur King of the Madagascar films: volatile, limp, all-powerful, he drums a baton on the heads of the clumsy constables (Jude Conway and Thomas Makinson). The constables search the audience for a missing lucky penny and this breaking through the frame of on stage / off stage, is playful, exciting and original.

In a particularly clever staging of The Enchanted Cave, we see simultaneously Aladdin inside the treasure cave and Abanazar at the entrance. It is a low-fi split screen: the two act on the one stage, each in his distinct site. A smoke machine within the cave colludes to make this dual scene work.

Aladdin The Pantomime is a madcap, wondrous, sumptuous, kindly and vivid collaboration. Dunedin’s Globe Theatre presents an adventure made to measure for children and enjoyable for the whole family.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer