Theatre reviews: Peter Pan/Sinbad The Pantomime/A Christmas Carol

Published on Wednesday 2 December 2009 17:57

PETER PAN *** ROYAL LYCEUM THEATRE, EDINBURGH SINBAD THE PANTOMIME **** BRUNTON THEATRE, MUSSELBURGH A CHRISTMAS CAROL **** ORAN MOR, GLASGOW

• Sinbad at the Brunton Theatre in Musselburgh. Picture: Complimentary

THE story of James Matthew Barrie is one of the most remarkable in the whole literary canon. From humble and grief-stricken beginnings in Kirriemuir, he rose through the late Victorian age to become not only one of the most successful playwrights in history, but one of the wealthiest and best known of men in the most powerful country on earth; and it's altogether right that at the end of this Homecoming year that the Royal Lyceum Theatre should bring his most famous play, Peter Pan, home to a Scottish audience for Christmas.

The difficulty is, though, that Peter Pan is no simple Christmas entertainment. It can be made into a rip-roaring, swashbuckling panto, with plenty of songs and magic and straightforward villainy; but that requires ditching large sections of Barrie's complex, reflective text. Or as Mabou Mines of New York demonstrated during this year's Edinburgh Festival, it can be made into the most intense and moving of adult shows, haunted by a profound sense of transience and loss. The difficulty with Jemima Levick's Royal Lyceum production is that it tries to be faithful to Barrie's original play in striking a magical Christmas balance between these extremes; and ends up falling depressingly between two stools.

The problem with this production certainly doesn't lie with the cast. Irene Macdougall is truly memorable as a mature, lovely and sorrowful Mrs Darling. Stuart Bowman is a fine Captain Hook, full of the complex mixture of unhappiness, jealousy, deviousness and yearning he hints at in a programme note. Scott Fletcher is a charismatic Peter Pan, part-angel, part-demon; and Kim Gerard a lovely, thoughtful Wendy.

Somehow, though, the ensemble energy that should bind this fine company together never really materialises. Perhaps it's the fault of Francis O'Connor's ambitious but impossible set, a hefty giant triangular bed that has to be constantly taken apart and reassembled by the cast; if there's one thing that truly grates on the nerves at a children's show, it's a fancy set that prioritises its own concept over the baffled understanding of the four-year-old next to you. Perhaps it's the general absence of live music, in Philip Pinsky's background score; it's astonishing how the mood lifts when the pirates actually sing a song. Whatever the reason for its leaden pace and lack of drive, though, this Peter Pan sadly fails to achieve the sense of soaring magic the play so clearly needs; and that despite some of the finest flying seen on a Scottish stage for years.

So it's a huge relief, after so much Lyceum angst, to turn to two jollier and much less pretentious Christmas shows that demonstrate real, practised skill in giving their audience a good time.

Down at the Brunton Theatre, for example, writer/director Liam Rudden and his team have created the kind of modest but totally effective local panto that it's easy to underrate, so lightly does it carry huge and important elements of the panto tradition into the future.

Set firmly in Musselburgh – on the quayside at Fisherrow, in the High Street, and aboard the good ship Bobbin' Tide – Sinbad The Pantomime tells the tale of handsome Sinbad, his glaikit brother Swishee, and their all-singing mum Saucy Nancy, a SuBo lookalike with aspirations to star in Musselburgh's Got Talent. Their fate becomes mysteriously entangled with that of the people of Atlantis, apparently situated somewhere beneath Bass Rock; including our delicious heroine Coral (a feisty 21st century Little Mermaid), and the fabulously ferocious witch Crabsclaw, played by Isabella Jarrett as a truly glamorous and charismatic wicked lady.

There's a fine, young sweet-voiced Dame in Craig Glover, a terrific Buttons character in Aaron Usher's Swishy, a gorgeous Little Mermaid in Julie Heatherill. There are cheeky musical references to We Will Rock You, the big Christmas show at the Playhouse. There's a brilliant weaving into the plot of Musselburgh's twin towns in France and Italy; there's the obligatory joke about Tranent ("here be monsters"). And above all, there's the raucous, lively, rag-bag radical spirit of panto, turning the world upside down, and making it new.

As for A Christmas Carol, this year's festive treat at Oran Mor in Glasgow – well, anyone who remembers the radical Wildcat history of Play, Pie and Pint producer David MacLennan, and his great creative partner David Anderson, will be able to guess just how much theatrical fun they create out of a 60-minute panto set in the bean-counting house of Scrooge Marley, now 85 per cent owned by the taxpayer. With a cast of thousands played by just four actors – including former Kings' panto star Andy Gray, in superb form as the dame Mrs Cratchit and at least ten other characters – this Christmas Carol is a hilarious, brilliant and rollicking piece of political satire about the fabulous scam, pulled upon us humble taxpayers by the banking classes over the past year.

So David Anderson's beaming, bonus-rich Scrooge loves Christmas, because it presents added opportunities to force the poor into debt. His Ghost Of Christmas Past is his idol Margaret Thatcher, brilliantly conjured up by Juliet Cadzow in a wig. And as for his horrifying vision of Christmas Yet To Come, that naturally involves the people taking to socialism, and the idea that property is theft.

Terrified by that prospect, he hastily buys the starving Cratchits a giant tub of turkey drumsticks. But by the time we're singing the rousing final song ("The crunch, the crunch, there's nae free lunch") we have a feeling that the conversion is only skin deep; and that this Scrooge will soon be back to "business as usual".

&#149 Peter Pan is at the Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh, until 3 January. Sinbad The Pantomime is at the Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh, until 2 January. A Christmas Carol is at Oran Mor, Glasgow, until 19 December.