The Boy Wonder and Button had a trip down to London this weekend to stay with the Recluse and the Principal. Of course, the highlight of their stay was Saturday night's trip to the Old Vic to see this year's pantomime, Aladdin, starring Ian McKellen (aka Gandalf in the Lord of The Rings movies) as Widow Twankey. Despite its length and some of the quite sophisticated humour alluded to in this review, it sounds like the BW and Button enjoyed themselves thoroughly, with plenty of opportunities to shout "It's behind you !", "Oh no he didn't !" and "'Ere, aren't you that Beattie off them telephone ads ?", not to forget the obligatory audience-participation singalong (the BW was very sketchy about details, I'm afraid).
Pantomime is, of course, peculiarly British. McKellen describes here how explaining the "rules" of pantomime to Kevin Spacey, director of the Old Vic, was as difficult as teaching him the rules of cricket. For a potted history of how pantomime developed, you can look here on the ever impressive Wikipedia (which even refers to McKellen playing in Aladdin, contrasting his status as a real celebrity with that of the typical washed-up soap star so often featured in provincial pantos). But for a really whizzy guide to everything panto, check out this site.
PS The BW also confirmed that he did get a prize for English and another for Music, though I still couldn't understand his explanation of how he missed the assembly during which the prizes were announced, and more particularly how he failed to notice that the other thousand Hogwarts pupils had mysteriously vanished.
Ain't the Button cute? As we walked to the theatre to see Aladdin I noticed she had a pack on her back almost as big as her, whereas the Boy Wonder was utterly unencumbered. "What's in the pack?" I enquired. "The [Boy Wonder]'s jammies", she replied solemnly.
Posted by: Surfer Dude | January 10, 2005 at 02:55 PM
Priceless !
Posted by: The Paternal Optimist | January 10, 2005 at 07:23 PM
Hi! It's Button!
I enjoyed the pantomime and I've shown my autograph to everybody in my year! I liked The Surfer Dude's comment very much and it made Mother Superior laugh as well.
From, BUTTON!
Posted by: Button | January 16, 2005 at 01:30 PM