We went along to the penultimate evening of the now traditional "adult panto" at Leicester Square Theatre - Snow White and the Seven Poofs. With a title as unsubtle as that our gang went well prepared for an evening of filth, innuendo, campery and rowdiness.
What we were not prepared for was the audience! They were dreadful, and at times the players themselves were visibly angry as time and again "audience participation" descended into anarchy, as a couple of drunken women were determined to shout and talk over the punchlines.
Despite the level of tension that created (and the condensation dripping of the ceiling that kept raining icy blobs all down our row), we still had a rip-roaring time. The jokes are (as ever) obvious, random interpretations of familiar pop hits provided the hand-clapping interludes, and the cast remained brilliant through the whole thing.
Halfway to Heaven's very own Drag Idol winner the fab Tanya Hyde was the squeaky-voiced "virginal" Snow White, abused by all and sundry (including the filthy slag Hilda and her muff) in her quest to marry Prince Donkey-Dick [I said it wasn't subtle!] - and was consummately professional in holding it all together. West End drag stalwart Bette Rinse played the most evil of evil queens with a vehemence brought on partly by nature(!) and partly by the audience, and the show's creator Simon Gross was suitably vile as Hilda.
And what of the "Poofs"? The rest of the cast were excellent, each called upon to play several roles in the performance - in particular Paul Shears as the Magic Mirror (every time he shouted "All right me lovers?" in his best Plymouth accent, we all had to shout "Fuck off, mirror!") and Victoria Hopkins as the Butch Dyke, who explained to the straights in the audience such gay mysteries as "cottage", "queen" and "fish"...
Some of the scenes were truly hilarious. I almost wet myself laughing at the array of dreadful costumes assembled on stage for the "woodland animals" scene - I don't recall Tigger, two gorillas, a kangaroo and a grotesque giant robin in the original - and when Snow White killed the "vermin" (“Can someone get this fucking fox out of here?”) I nearly fell off my chair. The ensemble number (traditional panto fare) that involved the whole cast imagining what job they would do if they weren't working for the Queen - "A nurse I would be - pants down, needle out, it's just a little prick", "A postman I would be - lick it once, lick it twice, stick it in the box" etc - each with different actions, was superb!
With a sing-a-long finale and the traditionally incomprehensible pairings-off in the closing wedding scene, it was truly wild and brilliant evening's entertainment - in the true spirit of panto. Definitely not for the kids or your gran! As the opening announcer said (sounding suspiciously like Dame Judi), the easily offended should “kindly fuck off” and leave the rest of us to it...
