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For ambience, Richmond Theatre never fails to deliver at Christmas time: tinsel and sparkle as far as the eye can see, red, gold and green decorations and a warm glow all around. The locals always contribute too – hats, scarfs and coats, even on a mild December evening, peeled off to reveal their Sunday best and a fervent appetite for sing-a-longs, bad jokes and the usual quips about nearby towns.
For this year’s pantomime ‘Snow White’, Jo Brand is the starring attraction as the wicked Queen Lucretia. Surprisingly, for someone with her comedy background, she feels a touch off with her timing and slow in her retorts with the audience – I assume it will get better as the season continues.
Keeping her ticking as best he can is ‘BGT’s Jon Clegg, who was in last year’s ‘Peter Pan’ offering. He’s good, but there were plenty around us saying ‘he did this last year’ to a few of his numbers – that said, his ‘smart men felt smart’ routine at the end was a real crowd-pleaser for kids and adults alike.
Scene-stealers and panto-saviours, though, are the ‘dwarves’: seven average-size men scuffling around on their knees with woollen legs attached to them. Bumping into each other, falling over and generally just having fun, it’s this type of chaos that the audience will remember.