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Although I did watch their online lockdown show ‘Moby Dick Whittington’, I’d not caught any of comedy trio Sleeping Trees’ live panto mash-ups. That’s remiss of me, because they’ve been a Battersea institution for years, starting life at the tiny Theatre 503 before moving to the larger Battersea Arts Centre where they’re now a seasonal fixture.
Sleeping Trees aren’t themselves in the show anymore: they’re pretty busy this Christmas, with their adult panto mash-up ‘Peter Pan’s Labyrinth’ over at the Vaults. But they’ve still written it (with Ben Hales). And their spirit very much lives on: ‘Little Red Robin Hood’ is still a panto pointedly written for three performers.
If Miya James, Sam Rix, Simone Cornelius would be chronically overworked acting out either ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ of ‘Robin Hood’ – let alone both – then that’s exactly the point. ‘Little Red Robin Hood’ is absolute chaos, the plot pinging around madly as the three – in the guise of a couple of BAC ushers and a delivery guy who happen across the script – careen wildly out of control. Doubling, tripling and quadrupling up on roles, they tell the story of the Sherriff of Nottingham’s dastardly plan to turn a fairy village into a car park and James’s Red Riding Hood’s attempt to fix things with the help of her grandmother, who is also Cher (as in, the singer Cher).
It makes very little sense and that’s the intent: it has the giddy air of primary school kids making up a game on the spot and having a bloody good time doing so, regardless of whether any of them actually understand the rules. It’s therefore not a surprise that the actual primary school kids watching the performance I saw went absolutely nuts for it: they seemed much more invested in the action than they might if the performers had given the impression they knew what they were doing.
And don’t get me wrong, they absolutely know what they’re doing, and director Kerry Frampton deserves enormous props for keeping it all ticking over without anyone having an accident. It’s meant to look like bedlam, and it succeeds. If it had a bigger budget and a larger cast I don’t think this approach would work in any way. But while it remains a determinedly cult affair, it packs an audience connection that fancier Christmas shows can only dream of.