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Pantoland at the London Palladium review: Panto, but nothing like we know it - and it’s a blast

Julian Clary and Donny Osmond  (Paul Coltas)
Julian Clary and Donny Osmond (Paul Coltas)

Think of the most unlikely stage pairing, and you’re unlikely to beat Julian Clary performing a duet with… Donny Osmond. Throw in the Tiller Girls – the high-kicking dance troupe, with feathers – Gary Wilmot doing a song about every station on the Underground to the tune of the can-can, Nigel Havers as a Christmas pudding, and an actual flying carpet in which Clary and Jac Yarrow turn upside down mid-air, and you get a flavour of Pantoland at the Palladium. It’s a blast.

This is panto, but nothing like we know it, at least not since last year’s Pantoland when Covid brought the curtain down after six performances. Normal panto has a narrative roughly framed around a children’s story, peppered with innuendo. This is innuendo peppered with the most fabulous variety acts with no reference whatever to a story. And it is, I’d say, quite unsuitable for children. The little ‘uns may not grasp Julian Clary’s riff on Covid jabs – “would you like it down the throat or a prick in the hand?” or “everyone has to wear a mask and be dipped in bleach… a normal Friday night for some of us” – but the filth quotient means this is a panto oxymoron, one for the grown-ups.

Pantoland at the Palladium (Paul Coltas)
Pantoland at the Palladium (Paul Coltas)

That is, if grown up is how you’d describe Donny Osmond’s fans. He recalled his first outing at the Palladium in 1972 for a performance before the Queen – “I didn’t anticipate the number of teenage girls,” he said – and there they were in front of him again, like him, just a little older. He himself was having a ball as he just about kept Julian Clary off him in their duet.

The night didn’t wholly belong to Donny Osmond. Gary Wilmot’s recitation of every Tube station by name was a feat and it is impossible to do justice to the brilliance of Paul Zerdin and his puppet Sam (who gets an act to himself with Donny Osmond), though he surpassed himself by ventriloquising for two sporting members of the audience who sat on stage while he gave them lines from the wings. Woman: “you don’t talk to me anymore.” Man: “I don’t like to interrupt.”

This was very much panto at the Palladium, grounded in a theatre that’s steeped in the genre and has a strong history of music hall and variety. I wonder how long we’ll keep a genre that relies so much on cross-dressing and camp homosexuality (Clary dismisses Jac Yarrow and Sophie Isaacs’ “faux heterosexual coupling”) in an age that takes sexuality so damn seriously. But for now, it’s still a hoot.

The best line of the night was Nigel Havers’: “I haven’t had this much fun since Boris’s cheese and wine party!” How we laughed.

London Palladium, to Jan 9; lwtheatres.co.uk

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