Review – Goldilocks and the Three Bears, London Palladium

Peter Pan and Snow White are not proper pantomimes according to that doyenne of panto dames Clive Rowe in Time Out. Couldn’t agree more.

The latter was last year’s Palladium pantomime. Goodness knows what Mr Rowe will make of this year’s offering, Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

Yet to Phil, this rarely performed story will always be a pantomime. It was the second one he ever saw, his first was, ahem, Little Miss Muffet. This was, naturally, a few years ago and at the Theatre Royal Bath with Sandy (Can you hear me, mother?) Powell as the dame. How he gasped as the bears’ woodland cottage unfolded to reveal the interior of a two-storey house before his very eyes and how the incredible blue of the linings of the chorus’ costumes forever seared his retinas as the story took a diversion onto a Mississippi paddle steamer. Don’t ask.

Review – Cinderella, London Palladium

Phil saw his first Palladium pantomime 31 years ago, which also turned out to be the venue’s last Cinderella and its penultimate pantomime for decades. Babes in the Wood was its last for almost 30 years – what ever happened to that title? Or Puss in Boots? Or Humpty Dumpty? Or Goldilocks and the Three Bears come to that?

That 1985 Cinderella included Hope & Keen, John Junkin, Paul Nicholas and Des O’ Connor who was rather brilliant at managing to keep the thing afloat. Just. There were real ponies, Step Sisters (they eschewed calling them the Ugly Sisters even then) called Cagney and Lacey and Dame Anna Neagle who died a few months after struggling on as the Fairy Godmother.

It was a pretty lacklustre affair, never reaching the dizzying heights of spectacle Phil expected of Palladium panto legend.