Wicked Witches Panto For Adults! - Review

Pleasance Theatre, London

**

Written and directed by Shane Shayshay Konno

Gigi Zahir

Leaping onto Wicked’s broomstick, Wicked Witches is the 2025 panto from the Pleasance. The producers have chosen to split the show into two separate versions, the Adult show plays to a strictly 18+ audience in the evenings while the Family iteration plays to the earlier houses.

Creating classy pantomime is a craft. Typically a show will play to a family crowd, frequently comprising school parties, and the humour has to be pitched very carefully. Saucy and edgy enough to make the grown-ups chuckle, but nothing that would make Granny (or the Headteacher) really blush. That's what a good family panto is all about - Oh yes it is!

Adult panto is a different ball-game, a no-holds-barred genre in which the gloves are (or should be) off. Its language and humour can be, and are expected to be, filthy. In adapting his family panto for an adult audience however, writer/director Shane Shayshay Konno has overreached himself and fallen very short. 

For an "adults-only show", the gags are lukewarm and the filth, smut and innuendo that would be expected, is equally tepid. With a script that is more eye-rolling than eye-watering, the evening turns out to be more of a gender-focussed, politically-correct picket line than the festive, bawdy, offensive entertainment that it should be.

To be fair, there’s solid work from both Gigi Zahir as the Wicked Witch (with stunning makeup) as well as Eleanor Burke as the Good Witch. Zahir turns in a cracking take on Adele while Burke deliciously hams up her Glinda-esque character. 

The much vaunted celebrity cameos come from the (brilliant) Ian McKellen as Toto the dog, lobbing in as many canine-themed puns as his brief slot allows, and Jeremy Corbyn MP. Gracing the show as the Wizard of Oz-Lington, Corbyn's acting skill is matched only by his ability to win a general election. There is however a delicious irony in seeing a failed national politician (locally of course, Corbyn is revered by a majority of Islington's munchkins who think he's wonderful) play one of literature's most celebrated charlatans.

Booking tickets for the Family version is strongly recommended. With a two-hour running time to fill, it’s gotta be better than this!

Runs until 22nd December

(Family version runs until 28th December)

Photo credit: Ella Carmen Dale

Attempted Assassination of Donald Trump - When Life Imitates Art

Stephen Sondheim’s 1990 musical Assassins offered a commentary on the (then) nine assassins and would-be assassins who in real life had all aimed, or planned to aim, a firearm at the President of the United States.

In 2018 Louise Bakker directed a production of the show at London’s Pleasance Theatre that disgracefully added an image of President Trump to the musical's shooting alley line-up of the actual historical presidential targets, suggesting in her take on the show, that Trump deserved a bullet.

I called out this appalling incitement to violence in my review of that production and to her credit Bakker then removed Trump’s image from the shooting alley scene in subsequent performances of the show.

While there is no suggestion that Thomas Matthew Crooks who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump on Saturday had seen Bakker’s production, incitement to murder should never be allowed to masquerade as art.

Night Of The Living Dead - Review

Pleasance Theatre, London


****


Written by Christopher Bond, Dale Boyer and Trevor Martin
Created by Christopher Harrison and Phil Pattison
Directed by Benji Sperring

Ashley Samuels and Marc Pickering

George A Romero’s 1968 movie Night Of The Living Dead not only unleashed zombies upon an unsuspecting world, but was also one of the first movies to fuse horrific gore with political allegory and just a spattering of satire. The film rapidly garnered cult status and it was a bold move from the 5 (predominantly Canadian) minds behind the stage show’s inception to translate the picture from stage to screen.

Holed up in a remote farmhouse and surrounded by hordes of the rapacious undead, 5 survivors seek to avoid the gruesome demise that inevitably awaits them. Aspects of the movie’s plot surface throughout the narrative, and it is a tribute to Diego Pitarch’s outstanding set design and costume theme, that the era and location (including frequent switches between the farmhouse’s ground floor and basement) are delivered so convincingly. Reflecting the original black & white photography of the story, Pitarch deploys an effective monochrome throughout.

But the narrative depends on the people and co-producer Katy Lipson has chosen wisely in engaging Benji Sperring to helm the show. As seen with The Toxic Avenger a couple of years ago at the Southwark Playhouse, Sperring is an accomplished director of comic ghastliness and he has chosen two of his Southwark stalwarts, Marc Pickering and Ashley Samuels to drive the evening’s morbid irony. A seminal 60s work, Romero ensured (and the play repeatedly acknowledges) that the issues of the Cold War, civil rights and sexual inequalities that were riving America’s psyche at the time fuelled his satire.

Mari McGinlay plays the eponymous Barbara while Jennifer Harding doubles up for Helen and Judy – with their respective interactions being as deliciously nuanced as a Roy Lichtenstein cartoon. The sound (Samuel West, James Nicholson and Paul Gavin) and lighting (Nic Farman) are top notch too, enhancing the shock comedy horror and providing the perfect complement to Pitarch’s designs.

The tropes and familiar plot lines play out well, though a re-run scene between a cop and his assistant (Mike Bodie and Tama Phethean respectively) proves a little tiresome. Nonetheless a quality and innovative piece of theatre that offers up a neat tribute to Romero’s original.

Runs until 8th June

Photo credit: Claire Bilyard