As panto season draws to a close, reviewer Nathan Harris reflects on the changing nature of the pantomime and on the Tron Theatre’s latest show – Peter Panto and the Incredible Stinkerbell.
Pantos are in a strange place at the moment. As we wrestle with what is unequivocally a racist, misogynistic form, the question of who a local pantomime can and should be for has become an increasingly troublesome one. Johnny McKnight and the Tron Theatre provide an emphatic, joyous response: Peter Panto and the Incredible Stinkerbell succeeds in delicately interrogating the pantomime’s form, and Scottish theatre, whilst creating a show that is filled with earnest, festive charm.
The play, which is the brainchild of writer/director/star Johnny McKnight, subversively toys with J.M. Barrie’s original Peter Pan story. It’s got everything you would expect: an overly earnest Peter (Star Penders) who never grows up, Wendy (Emma Mullen) as a flighty, precocious young Hillhead local, a wicked – English – Captain Hook (Robert Jack), and an often-mentioned, rarely-seen crocodile. The cast is, of course, led by McKnight, who plays the flatulent, titular dame Stinkerbell. Across the board, these performances are full of warmth and charisma – any minor technical shortcomings are offset by the palpable sense of fun that McKnight’s ensemble all work to create. When I saw the play, around half the audience was made up of a school group. The cast all seemed perfectly content dealing with an onslaught of jibes and heckles from the kids, with Robert Jack taking on the brunt of them. By the end of the show, it felt like the audience had been playfully brought into the action of the play without it ever coming close to derailing – a testament to the skill of the cast.
McKnight’s script is tight, robust, and peppered with a host of both local and global cultural references. Some of these – allusions to the recent US election, for example – feel a little more like box-ticking than anything born out of the writer’s own imagination. The jokes that really land are those that are directly tied to McKnight’s specific artistic path. He pokes fun at the pretentiousness of UofG students, the extravagant budget of the King’s theatre pantomime, and the floundering artistic status of the National Theatre of Scotland – all organisations that McKnight has professional connections to. Whilst he may not always have his finger on the pulse pop-culturally, his script provides an incisive, entertaining commentary on the state of the Scottish theatre scene.
McKnight’s script also succeeds in ever so subtly questioning the formal elements which make up the traditional panto. The queer subplot he writes – which involves Anita Wee-Wee (Katie Barnett), assistant to Captain Hook, and Jaegar Lily (Emma Mullen), a slightly clumsy step away from the problematic colonial characterisations within Barrie’s original story – feels distinct and refreshing. Anita comments that “At the King’s I’d be a boy.” It’s a surprisingly moving element of the narrative, and one that makes you feel that there is hope for the pantomime within the contemporary theatrical ecosystem, at least in more forward-thinking venues like the Tron.
Generally speaking, the play looks and sounds great. Ross Brown’s score, much of which is performed live, is spritely and charming. The sets, designed by Kenny Miller, are bright, vibrant and range from Captain Hook’s pirate ship to the interior of a Glaswegian institution, the Blue Lagoon chippy. It is a veritable feast for the eyes and ears; hamstrung only slightly by some poor sound mixing during musical numbers that involve the whole cast, whose singing is often not of a high enough standard to make up the difference. This often means that the jokes littered through the lyrics of these songs are somewhat lost on the audience. These are the only moments, however, where there is any noticeable sense of drag within the play.
It’s fitting that McKnight’s strange, charming, somewhat deconstructed panto has found its home at the Tron, a theatre that has consistently produced work that blends accessibility and earnest formal exploration. Peter Panto and the Incredible Stinkerbell is a joyful festive treat.
Author: Nathan Harris (he/him)
Instagram: nathanharris_1
Image credit: https://www.tron.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/TRO-308-Panto-Programme-8pp-DIGITAL.pdf
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