This time last year the sky fell in on the British panto. At the start of last December, with tiers before Christmas, Hackney Empire, one of the best panto purveyors in the land, never mind London, pushed its Jack and the Beanstalk back a year. While it was all well and good making do with the likes of ex-Blue Peter presenter Peter Duncan’s fun homegrown digital streaming effort, filmed in his suburban back-garden, I’ll say this: nothing beats the real raucous deal.
How long – thanks to the emerging threat posed by the omicron variant – this season’s jollity will last remains to be seen. What’s striking about Will Brenton’s script (directed by Tony Whittle) is not necessarily that it’s a weaker proposition than the kind of winning fare formerly rustled up by director-writer Susie McKenna, though it could definitely do with some clearer exposition and bigger gags at the start.
More than that, though, it reflects the weird, indeterminate aspect of the moment: there are next to no jokes about Covid-19, the political class are left satirically untouched and there’s even a shortage of saucy innuendos, as if the supply chain has broken down. But that’s a reflection, I think, of what a feat it is just to get the basics up and running again.
“Keep it simple Simon,” Kat B’s affable Simple Simon has the audience shout at him, again and again, and it’s a maxim at work throughout. You couldn’t even characterise the show as being especially urban. The action is set in Hackney-on-the-Verge, the finances of which have been dented by the loss of a magic singing harp, but in contrast to 10 years ago, and running gags about the Olympics, it’s minimally streetwise.
There’s something intangibly exciting about the Empire – as if the ghosts of music-hall turns past are willing it on – that it only takes a handful of exceptional performances to make the show fly. In fact it only takes one: Clive Rowe, returning as panto dame for the 14th time, is blazingly good.
Beaming from ear to ear, his Trot parades an assortment of OTT costumes: the winning combo a dress lined with repurposed shopping bags and two giant coffee chain cups over the puffed out bosom. Badinage and enforced audience-participation with squirming men? That’s inevitable. Groaners? He’s got ‘em. “Every Saturday we go to the moo-vies,” he coos of his cow Daisy. And vocally, this Olivier winner is the crème de la crème, belting out the soul number “Stay With Me” about his udder half.
Throw in a local councillor who fancies himself as Freddie Mercury, an inflatable giant that’s decently scary, plus a tap-dancing chorus-line of cockroaches and you’ll leave feeling full of beans.
Until Jan 2. Tickets: 020 8985 2424; hackneyempire.co.uk
