Wilton’s Music Hall – until 4 January 2024
Reviewed by Claire Roderick
4****
Potted Panto returns to Wilton’s Music Hall for a second Christmas season of joyful silliness and fun packing 6 pantos (and A Christmas Carol) into 80 minutes.
Writers Daniel Clarkson, Jefferson Turner and Richard Hurst give Jack and the Beanstalk, Dick Whittington, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and Aladdin the Potted treatment, and Clarkson and Turner perform the classic tales with the support of Sammy Johnson and Marie-Claire Wood.
Clarkson and Turner are a well-established comedy duo, and their onstage relationship is wonderful, with Turner doggedly persevering and trying to keep Clarkson’s manchild persona on track with the script. This allows lots of opportunities for Turner to patiently explain pantomime tropes and Clarkson to question the dodgier traditions. Clarkson bounds about like a puppy, interpreting directions with gleeful obtuseness and derailing every story in increasingly daft ways as Turner becomes more and more exasperated as Prince Charming and the Ugly Sisters steal the show.
The fast-paced mayhem is addictively silly, with the duo rushing on and off stage for quick changes (in Nicky Bunch’s fantastic costumes) and whizzing through the main plot points of each panto. Most of the gags land brilliantly, there is plenty of toilet humour for the kids and sarcastic jibes for the adults. Every panto needs audience participation and Potted Panto doesn’t disappoint with a brilliantly bonkers carriage ride sequence.
This is festive fun for the whole family – a fantastic feel-good romp that will delight everyone’s inner child.