The panto's the thing

There is much to be glum about at this time of year, but one light I always look for in the autumn shadows is the revelation of which unlikely celebrities have been hired for panto season. Who has traded a pound of their flesh (which, if casting permits, they can disguise with a menacing hook) for the adulation of near-sighted pensioners and children totally jazzed on carbonated soft drinks and Jelly Babies?  Acts you may not have heard of in 15 or 20 years, who you assumed had perished in an inferno of political correctness and reality television, will rise phoenix-like to give their Baron Hard-Up in Woking or their Buttons in Wolverhampton.

In particular, I am fascinated by the US celebrities who have been lured over here to embrace our long-cherished festivities. In recent years, pantogoers have seen The Fonz as Captain Hook, Patrick Duffy as Baron Hardup, creepy little Mickey Rooney (Hardup again) and Paul Michael Glaser  (another Hook). Fonzie initially motorcycled in to replace Hasselhoff, who got a better offer. It would seem from this that Captain Hook is touted as the Hamlet of panto roles, with Baron Hardup the King Lear. This surely must be one of the ways in which the stars are sold the gig by 'their people'. Like, 'Hey! You're doing theatre! In England! They invented theatre! You'll be getting really raw with your craft.' And 'Panto's, like, a rilly, rilly old custom. Y'know, like Shakespeare!' Either that, or it's the mythologically enormous paypacket that panto purportedly dangles.

Little do our American cousins realise that come mid-January, they'll have contracted tonsilitis five times as it is passed back and forth, in and out of the dressing rooms. And as well as their costume, lovingly stitched from the finest manmade fibres, they'll be wearing a large coldsore every night, which has been fed and watered by the freezing English weather. After they've performed their cover of Rihanna's Umbrella, while dancing with Faye from Steps and a dozen children twirling umbrellas, and helped cook a slapstick wedding breakfast for the finale using a giant box of cereal with Credit Crunch written on it, they'll be spending every lonely night sleeping in a grubby Holiday Inn, making up complimentary sachets of Cadbury's Options with their own hot tears, dreaming of sunshine and good dentistry.

Anyway, my point is, this year the Churchill Theatre in Bromley have hired Hollywood In The 80s' own Steve Guttenburg. I saw a bit of Steve on Dancing With The Stars – the inferior US translation of Strictly Come Dancing. He is the most relentlessly positive person I have ever, ever seen in my life. He makes Tom Daly seem like Leonard Cohen. He really does feel grateful and blessed for every sorry opportunity that has ever come his way, and he has the permanently beaming expression of a child star, yet the slightly artificial hairline of a middle-aged Californian actor. I hope he brings the man from the Police Academy films who makes all the funny noises as the kids would love it, and he could probably use the regular work. Miss R has promised she will come and see this with me, as I long to see whether this Overgrown Pollyanna can keep smiling through his sub-standard accommodation and four weeks being upstaged by two paunchy stagehands wearing a giant cow's outfit,  but I suspect that the prohibitive price of theatre tickets In This Country will prevent us. (Dear Melvyn Bragg, I know not where else to turn, but I am concerned our children can longer afford to go to the theatre etc etc). Still, if the Churchill Theatre could also hire Ted Danson and Tom Selleck to appear with Steve as Three Men Playing Ugly Sisters, there is no ticket price too high.

In which I am mistaken for a member of the orchestra

This weekend: more culture. It is practically pouring out of me and pooling around my silver sandals. Obviously it is raining a lot too. But still. I may as well be Melvyn Bragg. Lord knows, I'd love to have hair that thick.

Friday was West Side Story at Sadler's Wells, which was sometimes excellent but, ultimately, strangely unmoving. This is a significant flaw, clearly, since by the end of West Side Story, you should by rights be too distraught to connect one palm with other and applaud. I don't like to point the finger, but Tony, with his sensible chinos and buttoned-up pale blue shirt, just didn't seem to be the kind of man you fall in love with across a dancefloor. Maybe it was because I had been watching the introductary coverage of the Olympics earlier that day, but all I could think of when I looked at him, from our seats in the far reaches of the upper-upper-upper circle, was Matthew Pinsent...

...who has many excellent qualities which I lack – commitment, courage, strength, a history of getting up early – but impassioned leading man material he is, perhaps, not.

Then, on Saturday, back to the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, for which I wore a black dress. While we were sitting in the bar beforehand, sharing our table with a lovely all-male couple ('They're very friendly, the gays,' said Mrs Jones) one of them asked me if I was playing in the orchestra. Hmm. At least he didn't ask me to clean the table or fetch him a gin and tonic. Perhaps I just look like the kind of person who spent their childhood indoors practising scales rather than running around breathing in fresh air and sunshine (actually, that is exactly what I look like). 

But on with the show. Mrs Jones and I found ourselves in quite brilliant seats –  very close to the stage in an actual posho's box-type area, with room to stash your shopping and hooks to hang up your coat. The orchestra were right beneath us, playing the Romeo to our over-excited Juliet. 

We could see every bead of sweat on Charles Hazelwood's forehead. We could read the sheet music over the shoulders of the double basses. We did have binoculars. But anyway. Only a couple of weeks ago, when Miss W and I been in the same venue, gently perspiring in our cramped seats in the gods, we were wistfully wondering what it took to sit in one of those boxes. And now I know. Like the secret of good skin or a long life, it is old-fashioned good fortune, and nothing more. 

That was the last good fortune of the weekend. So much for the Canadians being a race of warm, friendly checked-shirt wearers. After I booked a hotel in Nova Scotia online last week, one of them has been attempting to take my credit card details out for a spend-up. O Canada. Bryan Adams would not endorse that, I am sure.

Lions and terriers and bears

It was quite the cultured weekend. On Friday I went to see The Wizard Of Oz at the Royal Festival Hall. There is lots to recommend it – some adorable animation used to convey effects and scenery which were beyond the physical limitations of the venue; some nice dancing; Roy Hudd. On the other hand, there were sluggish lighting cues, microphones turned on seconds too late, and Dorothy didn't really nail The Big Number. But any kind of review is basically rendered irrelevent by two things:

1) Toto was played by an ACTUAL REAL-LIFE DOG. Pity the actors, emoting and pratfalling and turning their musical theatre tricks, only to be comprehensively upstaged by a small waggy West Highland terrier who does his own stunts – which included, and would mostly seem to be limited to, running across the stage, and then running back again – guided by a homing device made from doggy chocs.

2) It is impossible to not have fun at any production of The Wizard Of Oz. It is like Joseph and it is like Guys And Dolls. They could be massacred by the world's least gifted amateur dramatics troupe, yet you would still leave saying 'Wow, those guys were great!' all because they were so indecently well served by their material.

A few years ago I had a go on one of those children's miniature trampolines, and I thought to myself 'This is amazing! They should give these to people with depression. You can't be unhappy bouncing up and down like this.' Unless, of course, you are operating beneath a particularly low ceiling.

[In a rare outburst of earnestness I should say that, in light of these last two posts, it may seem as if I have a somewhat cavalier approach to mental health. I would like to assure you that this is not at all the case. No punchline.]

To borrow from A A Milne, I think nobody can be uncheered by a trampoline. And maybe it's just me, but I also believe nobody can be uncheered by Follow The Yellow Brick Road. It just makes you want to beam, and clap your hands together like the precocious inhabitants of a sea-life centre.