Steve Marmion’s third Lyric panto as writer-director is an enjoyable beast that again fails to scale the heights of the grand old productions in east London, but should, at the very least, keep Hackney Empire and TRSE on their toes.
Marmion and co-writers Joel Horwood and Morgan Lloyd Malcolm have taken the Orientalist joshing of the Aladdin tale, relocated it to the multicultural kingdom of Hamma Smit, and spun it into a larksome morality tale about the corrupting power of money, with some gentle digs at bankers and, delightfully, professional pub bore Jeremy Clarkson.
Capitalist gazillionaires shouldn’t be afraid to take their offspring, though, as for the most part this is knockabout
fun based around incongruous deployment of yoot speak (I genuinely didn’t understand what Aladdin was trying to get us to say in his call-and-response routine) and chart pop songs of varying quality.
The show is very nearly stolen by set and costume designer Tom Scutt, whose lurid conjuration of Widow Twankey’s wardrobe and laundromat are things of retina-searing wonder. Shaun Prendergast is fun as Twankey, but despite some killer lines, never quite chewed into the scenery enough – for me he was overshadowed by Wishy Washy, amusingly played by Stephen Webb as a camp hipster monkey.