THE Tron Theatre, Glasgow has, for many years, been the home of the tongue-in-cheek pastiche panto. In recent times the author, and often the master of revels, has been the irrepressible Johnny McKnight.
This year, as its bounce-back from last year’s Covid-driven Christmas lockdown, the theatre is trying something a wee bit different. The writer, I’m pleased to report, remains the same, and the director and designer (the ever-excellent Kenny Miller) is well known to audiences of Tron pantos past.
The difference, however, is that, instead of a knowing, postmodern pantomime (complete with McKnight in the role of uber-dame), this year’s show, the gorgeously titled Olive The Other Reindeer, is a slightly smaller, and calmer, affair. Not for 2021 a clever parody of panto conventions that works for adults and kids on different levels.
Rather, this year’s show – which boasts a four-strong cast led by the brilliant Julie Wilson Nimmo in the title role – is a charming wee piece of family theatre for children aged 12 and under, plus their families. That said, having been written by McKnight, it inevitably has a few moments of panto-style audience participation thrown in.
READ MORE: Aladdin: A pantomime classic with plenty of oomph in its tank
It’s equally inevitable – in this tale of Olive and her three classmates at reindeer school in the North Pole – that there should be, courtesy of composer Ross Brown and choreographer Eva Forrester, a series of clap-alongable music-and-dance numbers. However, there is, in the midst of all these theatrical goings on, still space for a story.
Ms Santa (a working-class, west of Scotland woman played by none other than McKnight himself) is giving the four wee reindeer a final, socially distanced, pre-Christmas lesson via Zoom.
The class concluded, the female St Nicholas magically sends her pupils the all-important Christmas list which will be their delivery guide in the early hours of December 25.
However, when kind-hearted little Olive discovers that there are, in fact, two lists, and that one of them is a list of naughty kids who are to receive no Christmas presents, she resolves to right this obvious injustice. To say any more would risk spoiling a bona fide Yuletide thriller.
WHAT can be said with confidence is that, from start to finish, Nimmo plays Olive with a hilarious, almost surreal cutesiness that should be considered a children’s theatre masterclass. Anthony O’Neill (as Prancer, who is head-over-hooves in love with Olive), Lee Reynolds (spiteful school reindeer Vixen) and Tiger Mitchell (Vixen’s camper-than-Christmas sidekick Blitzen) all give excellent performances, but it is the astounding confidence of Nimmo’s brilliantly sustained comic persona that truly makes this delightful little production sparkle.
There is, sad to say, considerably less shine in the big-stage pantomime at the SEC Armadillo on Clydeside. Thanks to last year’s shutdown, 2021’s Aladdin is just the 11th edition of the SEC panto (which began back in 2010).
In fact, it came close to virus-induced crisis this year, too, when Gavin “Boabby the Barman” Mitchell (who had been cast as the lamp-stealing baddie Abanazar) had to pull out on account of suffering from long Covid. The show is only going on because Mitchell’s Still Game co-star Sanjeev “Navid” Kohli (who, these days, is to be seen playing Amandeep “AJ” Jandhu in the BBC Scotland soap opera River City) stepped into the breach.
Kohli is making his pantomime debut, playing opposite Greg McHugh’s much-loved comic alter-ego Gary: Tank Commander (who has been the SEC show’s headliner since 2017). In truth, the Still Game star’s first shot at panto is a reasonable one.
Kohli’s Abanazar is, as Scottish pantomime baddies tend to be, posh, English and excellent at winding children up into a furious frenzy. However, setting aside a dropped line which he failed to ad lib his way out of on opening night, his breaking from character to quickly jabber asides in the character of Still Game’s shopkeeper Navid is a comic gamble that doesn’t come off.
For his part, McHugh spends the evening insisting “my name’s Gary, no Aladdin” with his typical, crowd-pleasingly daft charm. Nonetheless, the wheels came off (metaphorically, and almost literally) when Gary’s miniature tank (an over-used prop from the past) broke down in the centre of the stage during Act 2 and could not be budged by frantic stagehands.
Technical troubles aside, multiple panto writer Alan McHugh’s script (which sets the tale in the apparently Chinese city of Clydeside) has a tired, Carry On Up The Double Entendre aspect to it.
It is hard enough to generate pantomime atmosphere in the unforgiving and cavernous Armadillo at the best of times. Even a 3D magic carpet ride full of scary computerised monsters and fine performances by the likes of River City’s Leah MacRae (as Widow Twankey), Blythe Jandoo (Princess Jasmine) and Brian James Leys (the Emperor) can’t save this lacklustre show from itself.
AND now, as Monty Python used to say, for something completely different. It is traditional at this time of year for Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre (which proclaims itself “Scotland’s new writing theatre”) to stage a wilfully untraditional, non-festive show.
This year’s offering, Wilf – a bold, dark comedy by James Ley – is about as Christmassy as a summer’s day in Ibiza, and twice as dangerous. The play, which is directed by the Traverse’s artistic director Gareth Nicholls, drags the unsuspecting theatregoer into the chaotic world of Calvin (played with stupendous brilliance by Michael Dylan).
Our protagonist is a young, gay Edinburgh man who is in a dreadfully abusive relationship, suffers from a bi-polar disorder and has a mother who has converted to a particularly nasty brand of Trump-admiring evangelical Christianity and migrated to the Bible Belt of the United States.
READ MORE: Mark Brown reviews Scottish theatre's festive offering
Calvin – who enjoys a much-too-candid relationship with his super-indulgent driving instructor Thelma (Irene Allan on blisteringly good form) – decides that passing his driving test and buying his first car (a second-hand Volkswagen Polo that he names Wilf) will offer the solution to at least some of his problems. However – finally free of his abusive boyfriend Seth – Calvin descends into a psychosexual whirlwind that even Hans, the Kirkcaldy leatherman, finds alarming.
It would be criminal to divulge the nature of the incident that finally convinces Calvin that he needs to change course. Suffice to say that the advance publicity for Ley’s play (which intimated that Calvin “falls in love” with his car) was something of an understatement.
Respect is most certainly due to the playwright for writing about often troubling subject matter with such an unlikely combination of no-holds-barred, almost cartoonish comedy and deep emotional sensitivity. It’s a balance that Dylan (who plays Calvin with the handbrake well and truly off), Allan and Neil John Gibson (tremendous in a plethora of supporting roles) embody, hilariously and touchingly, from first to last.
There are fourth and fifth players on-stage, too. Designer Becky Minto’s stripped-back Wilf is a theatrically utilitarian joy, while the soundtrack (which ranges from Rose Royce’s R&B classic Car Wash to Holding Out For A Hero by Bonnie Tyler) is a thing of comically appropriate brilliance.
Olive The Other Reindeer is at the Tron Theatre, Glasgow until December 24: tron.co.uk
Aladdin is at the SEC Armadillo, Glasgow until December 29: sec.co.uk
Wilf is at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh until December 24: traverse.co.uk
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