Peter Pan pantomime at King’s Theatre in Glasgow – review

Unusually this year, I saw the first night of the Edinburgh and the Glasgow panto in the same week, and seeing them in such close succession really rams home how each seems to exemplify the spirit of their host cities. Glasgow’s Peter Pan is even more uninhibited than Edinburgh’s Cinderella. The Glasgow crowd doesn’t so much cheer at the stage as lose their collective minds in reckless joy, and you get a strong sense of the Weegies’ fierce pride in their city, with references to Govan and the Barras, and a playful slagging off of their neighbours in Paisley and Airdrie. Edinburgh folk tend to wear their civic pride a bit more lightly, and they’d never stoop to poking fun at their neighbours; at least not out loud.

This year is the 60th panto at Glasgow’s King’s, and with Peter Pan, they’ve gone for a typically lavish, Crossroads-produced spectacle, with eye-stingingly garish sets and lavish costumes by Teresa Nalton and Mike Coltman. There’s a spectacular, if criminally underused, crocodile and the whole event is completely immersive, guaranteed to capture the imagination of any kid coming to the panto for the first time.

Alan McHugh’s adaptation of J M Barrie’s original takes all the liberties you’d expect with a show like this, and you have to take your hat off to any script that contains so many atrocious flag puns, or that (with a straight face) rhymes “sprinkle” with “tingle.” Elsewhere, though, it’s packed full of jokes that only a west-of-Scotland would get, and its use of songs is shrewd including, obviously, “Flying Without Wings“.

The formula for panto is basically the same every year, but this cast manages to make it feel fresh and exciting each time, and not just in the bits that they’re apparently making up as they go along. Elaine C Smith is a very rare example of a panto dame who’s actually a woman, and she loves playing the role of Greater Glasgow’s granny. Increasingly, however, she’s shown up by Johnny Mac, whose idiotic Smee is tremendous fun. He radiates energy, has good timing for the slapstick, and he’s brilliant with the kids that get brought up on stage.

Even finer this year, however, was the third regular, Darren Brownlie, who steals the show as an outrageously camp Tink. If there has been a more flamboyant performance on stage this year, then I haven’t seen it. He also balances the showiness with a winning sense of deflating his own ego and he needs to feature centre stage in future years.

Hannah Jarrett-Scott’s Captain Hook is a little flat in comparison, and the original songs are largely quite generic and unmemorable. However, those are small complaints in a show that otherwise sweeps all before it. A top night out? Oh yes, it is!