Pantomime

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Festival Theatre, Edinburgh

Keith Bruce

four stars

JUST as the late Gerard Kelly is often evoked by panto fans in Glasgow, Andy Gray will be remembered for a long time in Edinburgh as one of the core triumvirate of Edinburgh’s King’s panto, alongside Allan Stewart and Grant Stott.

This year the team has relocated to the Festival Theatre pending the refurbishment of their Leven Street home and the introductory voiceover explaining that manages to rhyme “sister” with “accept her” in a precursor of some of the excruciating wordplay that is a key ingredient of the evening.

Gray’s daughter Clare is part of that team, as Princess Lavinia, offspring of the evil Queen Dragonella (Liz Ewing), whose jealousy of the lovely orphaned Snow White (Francesca Ross) is the engine of what plot there is to follow.

Stott, as Lord Lucifer of the mirror that knows who’s fairest, shoulders the burden of keeping that story on track, if the booing audience lets him get a word in, while Stewart, as Snow White’s protective Nurse May, has run through an improbable number of garish outfits before the interval.

The fine voice of Brian James Leys, as Snow White’s beau Prince Hamish, dominates the singing, while his rival for her affections, pal Muddles – played by Jordan Young – is the production’s secret weapon. From his first “Hiya Pals!” Young has the audience onside, with all the physicality the role requires and verbal dexterity that is more than a match for Stewart and Stott.

As fans of BBC Scotland soap River City will have noticed, that TV show is well-represented in the cast, and has more mentions than show sponsor McQueen Dairies. It would be churlish to point out that “The Magnificent Seven” hi-ho-ing off to work in the forest has big screen experience (in Star Wars, Labyrinth, and Harry Potter for instance) that is more impressive, but their participation is oddly as small as they are of stature, excepting a robust characterisation of the First Minister.

While there are contemporary local references in Harry Michaels and Allan Stewart’s script, director Ed Curtis’s show is decidedly retro where it matters. That applies to the mechanical set pieces of flying sleigh and reindeer and scary monster, as well as to the dance numbers for the ten-strong ensemble.

Chiefly though it is in the comic routines, which lurch wildly from “adult” double-entendre to the most childish bottom jokes, with some quite surreal moments along the way. A huge amount of the running time is taken up with “front-of-cloth” routines, not always on that small part of the venue’s vast stage – which designer Ian Westbrook and choreographer Karen Martin use every inch of.

The technology of this Snow White is flashy, but it is in that interplay between the performers (and the audience) that it wins – and, now and again, pushes its luck.