Snow White – Review – Sheffield Lyceum Theatre

By Clare Jenkins, December 2024
This year’s annual Sheffield dose of ‘He’s behind you!’ isn’t so much a pantomime as a phenomenon. To misquote a 1950s journalist, describing (libellously) the entertainer Liberace, it’s “…the summit of slapstick, the pinnacle of panto… a wink-winking, side-splitting, festive-filled, laughter-luminous, quivering, giggling, multi-coloured heap of Sheffield farce”. A scream, in other words. Which is exactly what the first night audience did, children and adults alike.
The noise started in the square outside the Lyceum as the school groups gathered. It then followed us in, encouraged by musical director James (Jimmy) Harrison in Alpine-style costume, jumping around in the ground-floor opera box he shares with his keyboard. Together with a small band of cheerleaders, he whirled the audience into a frenzy of ‘All I Want for Christmas is You’, before trumpeter Danny Hammerton (another of the quartet of musicians) launched into ‘Bring Me Sunshine’.
“Jam-packed”
So even before the curtain rises, to reveal designer Morgan Brind’s multi-windowed fairytale castle straight out of a child’s pop-up book, it’s a production on speed. Written and directed by Paul Hendy, it’s jam-packed with sing-along songs, TV jingles and theme tunes, jokes and innuendo, with a multi-talented cast headed – as for the past 17 years – by Damian Williams as the dame, here in the guise of Snow White’s Nurse Nellie.
We first see ‘her’ in the Magic Mirror, in full panto outfit (topped by a red and black Henry Hoover hat and mop haircut), enjoying a pint in Sheffield station’s Head of Steam bar among ‘normal’ drinkers. Alerted to the fact that she’s expected on stage, the camera then captures her running across Tudor Square and bursting into the auditorium.
“Effortlessly funny”
The audience (maybe apart from the three men picked unsuspectingly from the audience as her potential ‘suitors’) love her, her jokes, her easy repartee with them and her outrageous costumes, courtesy of designer Michael J Batchelor. Often inventively based around TV adverts for vacuum-cleaners and household cleaning (think shopping basket headdresses), they culminate in her dressed as a Henderson’s Relish bottle (the Sheffield condiment-makers are the show’s sponsors) stuck in a meat pie. Cue a singalong about Yorkshire food led by Barnsley-born George Akid as her sidekick, Muddles.
Williams isn’t the only one to make a mark from the start. As Herman Von Bad Apple, Marc Pickering arrives onstage like a comical Richard III in black leather and velvet and shoes with exaggerated curled-up ends. “Boys and girls,” he announces, “mums and dads, alternative family units…”
He’s a master of the knowing look, the waggish aside, the elegant pratfall, the simply, effortlessly funny. Then there’s a wonderfully camp guest appearance by Alan Carr as the face and voice of the Magic Mirror, answering the Wicked Queen’s questions. In her first panto, Catherine Tyldesley (who played Eva Price in Coronation Street for seven years) does a fine job of making the Wicked Queen both sexy, sneering and boo-worthy. The scene where, singing ‘I Will Survive’, she ascends into a sky billowing with dry ice (asthmatics beware) and forked with silver lighting is particularly effective.
“Fast and furious”
The Seven Dwarves, led by Sarge (Dean Whatton), provide the perfect foil both for her and for the Nellie/Hermann/Muddles triple-act as they dance and prance around the stage. Matthew Croke’s Love Island Prince Charming, meanwhile, makes a storybook partnership with Aoife Kenny’s pretty Snow White.
The costumes are rich and vibrant, the lighting suitably atmospheric (especially the threatening red flames), there’s a fast-and-furious medley of magic music box numbers, and an equally jaw-dropping performance of Elton John songs, everyone in glittering silver and electric blue costumes with matching glasses. It ends with ‘I’m Still Standing’. And they are. The question is, as the curtain descends on two- and-a-half hours of unflagging high-octane performance: how?
‘Snow White’ is at Sheffield’s Lyceum Theatre until 5th January
images: Pamela Raith