THE time is almost with us to visit the world of silly billies, giants and dwarfs, evil queens and crafty henchmen.
Yes, the election is soon to be with us, and we the audience, sorry, the voters, are faced with decisions way more difficult than the dim and gullible Snow White ever had to contend with.
But if we can’t make a choice between the parties begging for our X, why not look to panto for the answers? The panto stage is bathed in the brightest lights of morality, it’s a world in which truth triumphs over lies, love over hate and good over evil. (And sometimes it’s a magical place where TV actors convince they can cope with a live audience.)
However, the question you have to ask yourself is will our political leaders appropriate the values of panto heroes – or are they villains?
Boris Johnson is clearly a shoo-in for the role of Pinocchio, a man whose nose must have extended every time he maintained his party will build 40 new hospitals and hire 50,000 new nurses, that Jeremy Corbyn wants to scrap M15, and that he’d loved to have chatted with Andrew Neil (‘he’s behind you, Boris!’) – except he was in hospital that day having a backbone inserted. The Geppetto pulling his strings is most certainly Dominic Cummings. But you have to ask; will the current Prime Minister ever turn into a real boy?
Jeremy Corbyn could easily be reimagined as Jack of the Beanstalk fame. Not too bright (two Es at A level) our bearded Jack is prepared to gamble on the dream his magic beans will grow and form a classless society and the rich will simply surrender their wealth and power.
Corbyn is confident he can slay the giant corporations, the multi-nationals, the evil bankers. And he is well cast, blessed in the sense he’s already used to angry voices, the Remainers who smell the blood of this Englishman who claims to be a European and the British Jews who can’t believe he can’t apologise.
But can Jack kill the giant and contain the Glaxo-Klein invaders, whom he says will wreck our NHS? His greatest threat could be his own mum, the very simple Dame Trot, a woman who knows him intimately, has little appreciation of numbers or value systems – who must be played by Dianne Abbott. This real-life Trot once said she was in primary school aged 14. (Either it’s nonsense, or she can’t count beyond 12.)
Imagine the Princess being played by John McDonnell, whom Jack truly loves, and one day the pair will live together in a kingdom in which the Rothschilds are banished and hikes in corporation tax are plentiful. Richard Leonard will play the little servant boy.
Aladdin? It’s Nicola Sturgeon of course, the little street urchin who finds a magic lamp, rubs it hard like she’s polishing her Kurt Geiger high heels and out pops a wise-cracking, laugh-a-minute Genie, (Ian Blackford) who grants him (her)three wishes. But it’s all the same wish. Independence. Independence. And independence.
The Genie doesn’t say what will happen after these three wishes are used up but one day Abanazar appears (played by Jackson Carlaw) who demands to know what Aladdin will do during the next 20 years of economic misery, how he will create a new currency and set limits on immigration – while dealing with the cost of keeping Widow Twankey and her sisters in one of Old Peking’s residential care centres.
Princess Jasmine is most certainly finance minister Derek Mackay, who will fund their palace with PFI money but we won’t expect Aladdin to fly too often on his magic carpet, given climate change-enforced air travel restriction, instead restricted to one flight a year. And Widow Twankey (Patrick Harvie) will be around to make sure Aladdin behaves.
Finally, Jo Swinson could well be a stand-out in Cinderella. But not playing the scullery scrubber who eventually meets her prince. Swinson seems better cast as an Ugly Sister, a loud performer, yet unattractive to voters who can’t bear the thought of another referendum.
Swinson will no doubt sees herself as Cinders, the empowered woman capable of rising to the very top – she even had Hugh Grant lined up to play the part of the Prince – but since then Grant has claimed he’s better in the wings.
What happens to this Ugly Sister whose feet don’t fit the slipper of public expectation? She’ll hope to be taken to live in the palace in exchange for voting support.
Does all this help? Not a bit? Well, forget voting and go see a panto. At least the heroes and the evil queens/giants/princesses are just a little more easy to identify. And the worst that can happen is a little ham acting.
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