Is it really a year since I reviewed Cinderella: The Pantomime? I feel like the gloomy dance critic overheard exiting a London theatre at Christmas muttering, "Oh God, one Nutcracker nearer the grave!" 

The problem may lie in the timing: this latest effort to tempt the tots comes just too soon after the Fortune’s last production, Roald Dahl’s delightful Twits. Or maybe an overdose of Roger Hall: Cinderella and Who Needs Sleep Anyway? and now Aladdin, ()then, first up for next year,  Who Wants to be 100?) taken in such quick succession can give indigestion to the most dedicated fan.

But the Box Office adores Hall, and that sentiment will probably be shared by the children, more than half in their second childhood actually, succumbing to the charms of old-fashioned pantomime. The ingredients are all here and it’s the mixture as before: beautiful heroine and hero, cross-dressed dame, villain, and comic sidekicks, including a glove-puppet and more surprisingly, a real dog, Zipper.

Director Douglas Kamo and unflappable onstage pianist Stuart Walker keep the action bubbling along, with lively song and dance numbers, although the story really is too thin for two and a half hours. The set, a romantic casbah, is pleasing apart from a disappointing treasure cave, and the costumes are both exotic and humorous: Paul Jenden’s designs brought to life by Peter King and Maryanne Wright Smyth.

Leading the cast is Grant Bridger as Aladdin’s mum, non-Arabian Widow Twankey, in purple wig and travesty of an eighteenth-century gown, quickly establishing a lively rapport with the audience. Operating a laundry gives Twankey the opportunity for plenty of terrible puns and dubious jokes – "It’s a dirty world out there" she warns – and she tosses them off with gusto, bantering even with the lighting operator. 

Although Bridger is fun, the production benefits even more through the casting of Aidan Bell as the evil Abanazar. The play would be in danger of blanding out with no real sense of danger to the goodies, were it not for his sinister presence, characterised by skull-like head and extraordinarily expressive hands. Bell’s credits include The Rocky Horror Show, and his menacing caperings certainly bring that to mind.

Abanazar’s plan is to use Twankey’s son Aladdin to procure the magic lamp that contains the genie. Amy Tarleton, as the genie who has been played as a Jewish mom in other productions, sounds like a cheerful Lynn of Tawa and farts to work her magic, but looks suitably Persian with a dashing costume that reveals her navel, more than was permitted in the old I Dream of Jeannie TV show.

Aladdin, played engagingly by James Murray, needs the genie’s powers himself, to help him win the hand of the lovely Princess Jasmine. Melanie Inglis sparkles as the charming and spirited Arab princess, first seen desperately trying to sip her drink through a burkha, but eager to join the real world and seek her true love, even if it does mean disguising herself as a Kavanagh College schoolboy on work experience.

As the Grand Vizier, who confesses to a somewhat implausible crush on Widow Twankey, Siale Tunoka looks in his red gown like a giant jaffa, and comes across as just as sweet. Danny Still is utterly tireless, handling the double role of good and bad identical twins Hankey and Pankey with aplomb, and giving the best ever interpretation of a frantic flying carpet.

My favourite scene: the wonderfully energetic routine in which the cast transforms into the laundry, washing, spinning and ironing in a neat example of physical theatre.  

Providing uncompromisingly good theatre for the young is vital and Aladdin deserves to pull in the crowds. Hopefully however, the Fortune will notice that Christmas pantos are also performed at the Playhouse, the Regent, the Mayfair and even the Town Hall, and though of course they are fun, perhaps our one fully professional theatre should provide something of more substance to see us through the silly season. Meantime I guess I can join in singing The Pantomime Whirl one more time…

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Saturday night’s Fortune audience was demographically surprising, the median age being much closer to 39 than 9. But hey, you don’t have to be a kid to enjoy a pantomime, and Roger Hall’s Aladdin, directed by Douglas Kamo, combines material aimed squarely at the littlies with jokes designed to sail right over children’s heads and keep the adults entertained.

Politically incorrect and shamelessly orientalist, Aladdin, like any self-respecting panto, has good tunes (music by Michael Nicholas Williams, lyrics by Paul Jenden, musical direction and performance piano by Stuart Walker), audience participation, and plenty of fun for just about everyone. So everyone had a good time.

At over 2 ½ hours, including the interval, the production is perhaps too long for a family show, mystifyingly so when there are several sequences that could beneficially have been speeded up or trimmed.

But, even if it doesn’t quite scintillate, it sparkles. The set, designed by Peter King and Paul Jenden, features lots of silky fabrics in bright colours, and is complemented by Maryanne Wright Smyth’s extravagantly gorgeous costumes [designed by Jenden -ed].

The actors are splendid. Grant Bridger is right over the top – the only place for a pantomime dame to be – as the Widow Twankey, Aladdin’s laundress Mum. James Murray as Aladdin and Melanie Inglis as his beloved Jasmine steal everyone’s hearts. Adam Bell’s Abenazar, the evil magician, is as wicked as they get. Amy Tarleton as the dim, new-age genie, Siale Tunoka as the lovably confused Grand Vizier, Danny Still, wordlessly and wonderfully expressive as Hankey and Pankey, and Zipper, as Twankey’s strangely canine cat, round out the cast.
 

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