This is the thread to discuss the panto you have seen this year. I’ve been moved to do this thread as I have just returned from the panto, and I’ve not been before.
Got dragged to the panto in Sheffield tonight. Obviously. It’s quite a big deal, thirty odd cast members and live band playing the songs, impressive musical numbers and a good bit with a flying carpet. It was Aladdin, as you will gather. That was the good news. The bad news:
- Incredibly racist Chinese caricature policemen. Did the full “me no rikey”, Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s comedy accent. Genuinely astonishing, you just don’t see that sort of thing anywhere else. Half expected someone to come out in blackface to wild applause. Does that sort of thing always happen?
- Jokes were so old and lame they should have taken out the back and shot. I appreciate that’s probably the point though.
- Bizarre musical interval where they sang a weird song everyone else seemed to know, over and over again, while a mummy came and removed cast members from the stage one by one. Utterly baffling.
- Three hours long. THREE FUCKING HOURS.
Overall rating: 2 out of 10, like spending the evening stuck in someone else’s impenetrable in-joke from 1973.
