Pantomime
Chick Whittington
MacRobert Arts Centre, Stirling
Mary Brennan
****
YIKES! In panto’s Stirling Stella, the time is out of joint. Scarier still, Queen Rat is back, with a vengeance. Oh, cursed spite! Can wee Chick Whittington hope to put things right? It’s her name in the title, and she’s supposedly smarter than her numpty brother, Slick. Will either of these siblings reflect the gene pool of their late, rat-vanquishing father, Dick? Or will they take after their garrulous mammy, and prance about in freaky-bouffant wigs and OTT costumes that reveal in-yer-face assets? And what’s problematic about time?
Welcome, folks, to the extravagant punning - the sassy gags, the stonking song’n’dance numbers, the sheer daft energy – that is a Johnny McKnight pantomime. Writer/director/performer McKnight is well on previous form, nodding shrewdly at panto traditions while winking, roguishly, at aspects of today’s pop culture that – ranging from Beyonce to Ed Sheeran - click engagingly with youngsters (of all ages!). So what if the tenuous plot is caught up in a time-travelling device that wheechs everything back, 50 years, to 1967 when a young Dick Whittington first met Alice Fitzwarren.
Never mind that the sums don’t add up – the Whittington weans are clearly not pensioners - just immerse yourself in the hilarious mayhem that sees McKnight (in chubbette fat suit) strut knowingly funny stuff as Ma Whittington, sharing comedy honours with Helen McAlpine (a razzle-dazzle Queen Rat), Katie Barnett (the rat’s whiskers as her sidekick Ratatouille), Emma Mullen (a feisty Chick) and especially Robert Jack as Slick, the quintessential galoot with heroic comic-timing.
Local youngsters – I saw the Chookies - get in on the act with unstinting panache, as impressive in the pastiche 60s scenes as in the here and now. Go – you’ll have the time of your lives.
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