Goldilocks and the Three Bears, review: a wonderfully assured panto debut from Jason Donovan – Telegraph.co.uk

Birmingham Hippodromes pantomime Goldilocks and the Three Bears is a show in which unbridled joy bursts from the stage. It begins with a fabulously over-the-top musical number accompanied by explosive pyrotechnics and a dazzling light display in which a high-kicking chorus makes the gloriously extravagant promise that we are about to witness the greatest show on Earth.

Director Michael Harrisons production (for massive, UK-wide producer Crossroads Pantomimes) has the audience in the palm of its hand even before we meet panto veteran Matt Slack (starring in his eighth consecutive Hippodrome Christmas show) and this years headliner Jason Donovan (who is, somewhat improbably, making his pantomime debut).

The rollicking intro sets the tone for a fast-paced show that treats the original fairy tale of Goldilockss woodland invasion with cheerful disregard. The conceit in this version (a hybrid of material by the producers house writer Alan McHugh and bespoke lines by Slack) is that the circus of Betty Barnum (increasingly outlandishly costumed dame Andrew Ryan) is under threat from Donovans evil ringmaster Count Ramsay of Erinsborough the first of many gags connected with the Australian TV soap opera Neighbours, in which Donovan shot to fame in the late-1980s.

In truth, Goldilocks (talented musical theatre performer Samantha Dorrance) and the bears are shoehorned into a tale that is set up to accommodate a series of circus acts. Indeed, as the likes of impressively perplexing illusionist Phil Hitchcock and extraordinary showman and juggler to French presidents Pierre Marchand do their respective things, the show seems more like an episode of a new television show called Birminghams Got Circus Talent than a piece of traditional Yuletide entertainment.

With all this going on, theres precious little room for narrative, especially as McHugh and Slack have, between them, ensured that the script is positively bursting with double (and, quite often, single) entendres. The appropriateness or otherwise of this material for a family show aside, one cant help but feel that the 1970s are likely to be calling the Hippodrome asking for the return of their salacious humour.

Elsewhere, Doreen Tipton plays an eyebrow-raising, politically incorrect character namely, a lion tamer who is, with scant logic, a self-declared lazy cow and a benefits fraudster who falsely claims to have a disability. This questionable oddity could have stepped out of a Carla Lane sitcom from the 1980s.

Link:
Goldilocks and the Three Bears, review: a wonderfully assured panto debut from Jason Donovan - Telegraph.co.uk