Theatre reviews: Weans In The Wood | Aladdie
Johnny McKnight gives a no-holds-barred performance as the lusty dame Magic Merlina in Weans in the Wood at the Macrobert, writes Joyce McMillan
Weans In The Wood, Macrobert Arts Centre, Stirling ★★★★
Aladdie, Gaiety Theatre, Ayr ★★★★
There was a moment of onstage celebration, at the gala opening night of this year’s Macrobert pantomime, to mark 20 years since Johnny McKnight - Scottish panto king, and author and performer of the award-winning dame show She’s Behind You - first appeared in a Stirling panto.
Back then, he was playing the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz; but within a few years, he had established himself as a great writer and director of cheeky 21st century Scottish pantos, and a world-class dame, increasingly alternating appearances at Stirling with commitments at the Tron in Glasgow, and beyond.
This anniversary year, though, McKnight is back at full blast on the Stirling stage, with a no-holds-barred performance as the lusty dame Magic Merlina in his 2016 panto Weans In The Wood. Truth to tell, this switchback tale of a battle for dominance between Merlina and the nasty Sheriff of Stirling Stellaham is not one of McKnight’s more coherent plots; and unless you spend most of your time glued to pop YouTube, or to telly blockbusters like Traitors and Strictly, most of McKnight’s jokes will whizz past you, in a fast-paced blizzard of referential one-liners.
Yet if it’s hard work being a cultural satirist at a time when culture is ever more fragmented, there’s still a mighty and irresistible inclusive energy about a McKnight panto. Designed by Karen Tennant to resemble an explosion in a sparkly fabric factory, Weans in the Wood rollicks on through its tenuous storyline without pause or apology, supported by a high-powered cast - including Robert Jack as the Sheriff, Dani Heron as Little Red Riding Hood, and an inimitable Helen McAlpine as Hansel - and two terrific teams of local young performers, this year playing helpful woodland fairies, and slightly more sceptical woodland animals.
Choreographer Stephanie MacDonald’s full-cast song and dance numbers are formidable, with McKnight leading the team like a frolicking teenager, in ever more outrageous costumes. And on gala night, there was also the moment when Merlina spotted a Provost’s chain glinting in the second row; and began a one-sided flirtation so intense that Donald Balsillie of Clackmannanshire - for it was he - ended up on stage, co-starring in a first-act finale version of Can You Hear The People Sing that was truly unforgettable, in more ways than I can safely describe.
It was at Ayr Gaiety, in the days of Johnny Beattie, that Johnny McKnight first glimpsed the magic of panto; and it’s largely thanks to another hugely talented young Dame - writer and star Fraser Boyle - that the Gaiety panto remains a highlight of the Scottish season, becoming last year’s winner of the first-ever CATS Award for Best Scottish Panto.
This year, the Gaiety show has lost its inspired director Ken Alexander, now living and working in Australia; but it remains a small gem of a traditional panto, blessed with a story - in this case Aladdin, re-christened Aladdie - that seamlessly integrates local detail into the plot, and brilliantly deploys its ten-strong cast to create a show just the right size and shape for the warm embrace of the small Gaiety auditorium.
There are outstanding comic performances from Boyle himself as Widow Twanky, Gavin Jon Wright as the villain Abanazar, and Ciara Flynn as Aladdie’s daft sister Alassie; and howls of laughter as - in a brief film sequence - the Dame and her pals set out to travel by bus from New Cumnock to Abanazar’s lair in Maybole, changing at Ayr. And at the heart of things, there’s a love story taken just seriously enough to give the show a strong narrative spine; well told by Louis Kerr as a funny and fine-voiced Aladdie, and the lovely Mia Musakambeva, as a Princess Destiny who would rather work on a college placement at the Twanky laundry, than be mistress of the most glittering palace in Ayrshire.
Weans In The Wood is at the Macrobert Arts Centre, Stirling, until 3 January; Aladdie at the Gaiety Theatre, Ayr, until 4 January
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