Review: KITTEN IN HEELS, Lost Theatre, December 11 2015

There's not too much of a difference between adult panto and the family shows currently raking in the cash that will keep theatres running through 2016. Okay, there are sweary bits and some single rather than double entendres and you probably wouldn't want your 10-year-old asking questions about props that come from Ann Summers rather than Hamley's, but there are plenty of advisory notices to avoid that parental faux pas. Adult or otherwise, pantos rely on madcap retellings of the familiar tales with outrageous costumes, outrageous jokes and outrageous ad-libbing, The best work best when there's plenty of chemistry between the performers themselves and between them and the audience - get that right and all is forgiven.

Kitten In Heels (at the Lost Theatre until 20 December) reunites a cast who have worked together on pantos for years - there's a good line about how many adult pantos there are these days and how few there were when they started. History like that guarantees that there'll be bitchy asides, off-script insults and glorious corpsing, as the show sometimes disintegrates before returning to a roughly even keel. That's what the audience enjoy most!

This liberal interpretation of Dick Whittington (whose first name is surely the panto gift that keeps on giving) is driven by old hands Paul L Martin (looking like the unlikely offspring of Mrs Thatcher and Lily Savage) as the Dame, Jamie Anderson as King Rat (think Nick Rhodes if he'd let himself go - really let himself go) and Becky Finlay-Hall's talking cat (a feminist catwoman if you will). There's good work too from Ashton Charge as a dim Dick, Holly Aisbitt as a female Kevin The Teenager type and Fancy Chance as a peddler with an ever more inventive choice of undergarments. Music, including a rousing singalong "Total Eclipse Of The Heart", comes from Birgitta Kenyon on keyboards and disdainful looks.

Being "18+ only" allows for a bar in the corner of the auditorium and, with a well-judged 8.00pm start, there's a convivial, but not too boozy, atmosphere that oils the audience participation and the laughter. If the show is a little too long and loses a little pace in the second half as it wraps up an ogre plot device that wasn't really needed, the show is still a whole lotta good, if not very clean, fun. Turn up at 7.00pm, have a couple in the bar and then another in each half of the show, and you'll have a fine time!