I love panto, I love its traditions, its history, its very Englishness and its tendency to throw up hairy men in backless dresses and tights. So much that I’ve spend way too much time dragging the medium into the 21st Century on Twitter, but last night I went to see my first actual in-the-flesh with-well-know-people panto for about 20 years. The Hippodrome’s Sleeping Beauty is a thoroughly modern panto too, the 3D (yes really), a character out of adverts (although everyone loves Churchill the dog) and a star that has risen only in the environs of reality TV. That said it still has all the proper ingredients: a dame, the chameleonic (as long as it’s within the tall bloke in dress category) Ceri Dupree, fart jokes, songs that seem to hold up the action, references to nearby towns being uninhabitable, everything you’d expect. I’m no great Joe Pasquale fan, as indeed I wasn’t a big Russ Abbot fan the last time I went to a panto (that too was at the Hip, Aladdin), but it’s odd how some actors or comedians seem only to really be at home in this special brand of theatre. It’s difficult to see how...
