GLASGOW’S Tron Theatre has a long and illustrious tradition of pastiche pantomimes dating back to Babes In The Wood, written and performed by Forbes Masson and Alan Cumming, in 1987. In more recent times the Tron’s Christmas offering has been written (and often directed and performed) by the shy and retiring Johnny McKnight.
The pastiche panto – which both trades on and sends up the conventions and tropes of traditional pantomime – walks something of a tightrope. Like a regular pantomime, it seeks to attract cross-generational, family audiences.
However, I’ve long thought that – with their knowing, tongue-in-cheek gags about everything from contemporary politics to theatre itself – the Tron pantos have tilted more towards adult cabaret audiences. If last Thursday night’s crowd is anything to go by, many theatre-goers are coming to the same conclusion.
READ MORE: My guide to what's on at Scotland's theatres over Christmas
In the overwhelmingly adult audience, you were more likely to find a group of passport office staff on a work’s night out than a gaggle of weans from a local Guides or Scouts troupe. Which is, I reckon, pretty much as it should be.
That’s not to say that McKnight’s latest pantomime opus, Peter Panto And The Incredible Stinkerbell, excludes children. It’s just that there’s something of the Rocky Horror Show, camp cabaret, cult atmosphere around the show.
What with Star Penders gender swapping into the role of Peter Panto and, needless to say, McKnight (above) dragging up as the pantomime fairy Stinkerbell, the cross-dressing makes the show look like a secret party for Tory MPs. If there was a “Camp as Christmas” award for a Scottish pantomime character, Marc Mackinnon would, surely, win it for his playing of Nana (household pet and money-saving nanny to the snooty Darling Darling family from Glasgow’s West End).
Step aside Darren Brownlie’s Tink in the Glasgow King’s Peter Pan. Mackinnon’s six-foot-five, bearded pink poodle is gloriously reminiscent of a seemingly reluctant, dry-as-a-bone MC at Delmonicas (other gay bars are available).
If all of that isn’t camp enough for you, there’s designer Kenny Miller’s sets and costumes, which are, typically, over-the-top fabulous. He ensures, for instance, that, sitting in music corner (stage left), composer and musical director Ross Brown is (in keeping with the show’s nautical theme) got up like a Jean Paul Gaultier sailor.
Brown’s compositions are typically and brilliantly diverse, from a wonderfully satirical song for the Westenders to a comically ironic number titled It’s The Big Love Song.
Oh aye, and there’s a story, too. Penders’s thigh-slapping Peter has been challenged to a “square go” with Robert Jack’s outstandingly entertaining Captain Hook (above). Katie Barnett impresses as she shifts between Hook’s hilarious, but not-so-evil, sidekick Anita Wee Wee and Mrs Darling Darling (wife to Jack’s Mr Darling Darling).
Likewise Emma Mullen, who is en pointe as both West End Wendy and Peter’s warrior pal Jaeger Lily.
As ever at the Tron panto, the hilarious ad-libbing – not least (on Thursday evening) McKnight’s riffing on an imaginary past romance with an audience member – almost overshadows the excellent script.
Until January 5: tron.co.uk
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