Ian McKellen sends festive feathers flying in Mother Goose — review

Mother Goose

Duke of York’s, London

Generally it is a sprinkle of magic or a swashbuckling fight that saves the day in a Christmas pantomime. Not when Ian McKellen is at the helm. His pantomime dame wields the words of Shakespeare. Resplendent in a ridiculous fur hat, with a beatific smile on his face and a handbag draped over his arm in the manner of the late Queen, he launches into Portia’s gravely beautiful “quality of mercy” speech from The Merchant of Venice — and so vanquishes evil. The raucous pantomime audience — which had been booing the baddie minutes earlier — bursts into delighted applause.

It’s a wonderful moment — and typical, in a sense, of McKellen. Loved by many as a great Shakespearean actor, and by many more as Gandalf, he’s always had a soft spot for vaudeville. During his 80th-birthday one-man show, he recalled standing in the wings of a variety show as a young boy, entranced by the way garishly painted performers transformed into magical creatures in front of the footlights. That he can quote a subtle Shakespearean speech in favour of clemency amid the slapstick and silliness of a pantomime is testament to his deep understanding of live theatre.

And it’s something of that redoubtable music-hall spirit that he brings to the role of dame. His Mother Goose is a benign, unflappable northern matron with a twinkle in her eye — part Ena Sharples, part Victoria Wood. He first toddles on in Cal McCrystal’s production with his hair in rollers and the gait of a lady who’s not quite certain that her girdle is going to stay the course — but the demands of the plot will have soon have him tap-dancing, slinking across the stage in (ultra-brief) pink baby-doll pyjamas, and bouncing around in a teeny-weeny miniskirt hurling footballs at the audience.

In Jonathan Harvey’s telling of the tale, Mother Goose runs an animal sanctuary along with her long-suffering husband Vic (comedian John Bishop, gleefully breaking the fourth wall at every opportunity). Times are hard — the biggest boos of the evening are reserved for “the energy company” — but Mother Goose won’t close her doors to any waif or stray and so, when a discombobulated goose (Cilla Quack) falls out of the sky, she takes her in. Cilla returns the favour by laying golden eggs. In most fairy tales, that turn of fortune would be the end, but Mother Goose has a more interesting moral message. Wealth and fame begin to corrupt Mother Goose and she has to learn the hard way that celebrity isn’t everything.

Harvey’s script is wreathed with the obligatory double-entendres and political jokes — references to partygate, Liz Truss’s shortlived premiership and Elon Musk — and has an underlying message about acceptance and inclusivity. But it doesn’t do to dwell too long on the logic of the plot in any panto: misrule is the order of the day. So it is that we have a ridiculous, messy cake-baking scene, a random ghost appearance and a singalong to football favourite “Sweet Caroline”. Some scenes feel a bit tepid (the cake-baking could be wilder; the jeopardy could be dialled up more in the rescue), but there’s such an appealing, good-natured feel to the show that it’s hard to mind.

There are winning performances from Anna-Jane Casey as the golden-voiced Cilla (who announces her arrival by doing the splits), Genevieve Nicole as Camilla, Queen Consort, struggling to navigate doorways in an absurdly huge hat, and Richard Leeming as a nerdy bat. At the centre of it all is the infectious delight of McKellen, an 83-year-old knight of the realm, hurling sweets around the auditorium and beaming as if he were still his eight-year-old self at his first pantomime. Irresistible.

★★★★☆

In London to January 29, then touring, mothergooseshow.co.uk

Dolly Parton’s Smoky Mountain Christmas Carol

Queen elizabeth hall, Southbank Centre, London

The London fog makes way for the Smoky Mountains in one of this season’s more unexpected festive shows: Dolly Parton’s Smoky Mountain Christmas Carol. Charles Dickens’s popular novel is a December regular on the UK stage, but this year enthusiasm has snowballed — perhaps there is something about Dickens’s rage at social inequality and the plight of vulnerable children that strikes a chord right now.

It’s particularly novel, however, to find the old grump sulking and scrimping not in Victorian London but in 1930s east Tennessee. Yet that’s where he pops up in Dolly Parton’s musical, which spirits him into a Depression-hit mining community where Scrooge and his former partner, Jacob Marley, have bought up and squeezed dry every institution in town. The mention of Christmas, we are told, makes him “madder than a mule eating bumblebees” — not a line that features in the original, but we get the picture.

This is not a version that will challenge either Jack Thorne’s beautiful adaptation at the Old Vic or Simon Russell Beale’s touching performance at the Bridge Theatre for depth of psychological understanding. The storytelling seems rather tame and Robert Bathurst’s Scrooge feels a bit short-changed (not something his miserly early self would stand for). We should surely feel the cold hand of mortality on his heart, but his spooky experiences don’t feel chilling enough to warrant his smitten conscience and change of heart. Meanwhile Alison Pollard’s production feels somewhat cramped by the space.

But there are some smart ideas in this adaptation (by David H Bell, Paul T Couch and Curt Wollan). The shift of location brings a new slant to the story and there are references to pit accidents, teenage pregnancies, industrial unrest and the need for unionised labour. Young Scrooge in this version gets his kind-hearted employer arrested for (unwittingly) selling moonshine-laced syrup during prohibition and one touching song has the impoverished locals dreaming about what they might buy from the Sears Roebuck catalogue. The Ghost of Christmas Future is played, ingeniously, by Corey Wickens’s excellent violinist who communicates only in music.

And it is, unsurprisingly, the songs that drive the story, many of which are gorgeous. Old Marley rises from beyond the grave in a hell-raisin’ country rock number; there’s a gentle, richly harmonised ensemble number “Appalachian Snowfall”; a wistful duet between young Scrooge and his loving sister, “Three Candles” (delicately sung by Sarah O’Connor and Danny Whitehead); there’s bluegrass, hoedown and a skiffle band. They raise the rafters and lift the spirits. And, in the end, there is a warmth and joy to the show that melts away many objections — in keeping with its story of a frozen heart thawed.

★★★☆☆

To January 8, southbankcentre.co.uk