The Big Tiny is back in Bury with a show that again lives up to the company's name: while the stage and the cast are tiny, the production doesn't at all skimp on sets or costumes and has a script stuffed to bursting with content. They even manage to finish the first half with Aladdin floating on a flying carpet just like in some of the big corporate pantos, and probably created in the same way, albeit on a Tiny scale (designed and constructed by James Richards).
This is an Aladdin that sticks to its traditional setting in Widow Twankey's laundry in Peking, while avoiding any uncomfortable racial stereotyping and adding a few interesting original touches. Ms Twankey's (Neil Jennings) business is suffering from competition from Mr Wu next door (no, that George Formby number doesn't appear). Her sons Aladdin (Shahar Mizrahi) and Wishee Washee (Daniel Craig-Salmon, who most embodies the spirit of panto with no cynicism or tongue in cheek) run into a girl escaping from the palace, with whom Aladdin falls instantly in love—just as he and Wishee were singing how "The Two of Us" were, up to then, inseparable.
The girl turns out to be Princess Jasmine (Thea Day), whose mother the Empress (Leni Murphy) would never let her associate with someone from the slums. But then Abanazar (Ian Hayles) appears, takes Aladdin to Cairo to fetch the magic lamp and locks him in the cave when he refuses to pass it to him. Aladdin releases the Genie (Aimee Louise Bevan) and becomes wealthy, but Abanazar plans to get his hands on the lamp and reverse Aladdin's good fortune.
Writer Ben Richards adds some story elements of his own, such as Aladdin having to decide whether to run away with Jasmine or stay to help out his family—and the result isn't necessarily what you might think (a bit of Brechtian dialectics in panto is okay by me). There are so many gags and set pieces that, at times, it feels like less would be more to allow each to develop fully and to integrate them more smoothly into the story.
Murphy and Bevan double as comedy policeman but are rarely on stage together to establish a double act. Wishee Washee asks us to look after his globe, but I'd forgotten what we were supposed to shout by the time someone tried to steal it. But then we also get the Empress doing the Tommy Cooper glass-bottle, bottle-glass routine to decide whether Aladdin gets to marry the Princess, a very cool crocodile in a washing machine, soakings from both water pistols and a spitting camel, running gags around the pronunciation of Abanazar's name and a member of the audience chosen as Widow Twankey's 'boyfriend' and an important intervention that changes the course of the story from the real stage manager, Jess Dalloway.
The songs fit well (although none would have been in the charts during the lifetime of any of the younger spectators, or probably some of their parents), including the opening "Mr Blue Sky" by ELO, "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" by Tears For Fears, the Madness "Our House" going into the Crosby, Still, Nash and Young song of the same name via Sister Sledge's "We Are Family" and "Comedy Tonight" from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. In some cases, these were a bit of a stretch for some singers and could perhaps have been transposed to help them.
The press night was also the opening night, so interactions with the audience and parts that diverge from the script (or appear to) were sometimes a bit clunky, but this will, I'm sure, very quickly become much slicker in Will Cousins's fast-moving production.
While it is a touch long, particularly with so many young children in the audience, there is plenty of comedy, music and audience participation and it looks terrific. This is clearly a company that loves the panto form, and this comes across on stage.