The York Family Robinson [York Theatre Royal Review]

The York Family Robinson
York Theatre Royal, Tuesday 20th December 2011

It’s been seventeen years since we started going to the pantomime at the Theatre Royal in York, quite possibly one of the most unique pantos in the country. Though it doesn’t contain any celebrities, soap-stars or big names that will sell tickets, it does contain Berwick Kaler (lead actor, writer, dame), Marin Barrass, Suzy Cooper and David Leonard, who have become big names in the York area, attracting people from all over the country and the world to the annual pantomime, this year taking the story of the Swiss Family Robinson, as loosely as always of course, giving it a York makeover and delivering it to packed out audiences over seven weeks.

The storyline involves villain Zantanus Junior, son of the devil, attempting to find the horns of his father which will give him the ultimate power of evil, but only if he finds them within twelve months. Whilst attempting to find Devil’s Island, he stumbles across the Robinson family who, with Man Friday knowing where the island is, are kidnapped by him and land in Australia, only to find the island and ultimately stopping Zantanus from retrieving the horns. This is a very quick summary of what is, as usually, a twisty-turny mad-cap pantomime that puts humour over plotting.

If I’m being honest to myself I have found the pantomime going downhill over the last few years with the humour feeling a little tired even if the feel was as good as ever. However I feel that this year was very much a return to form.

The backdrops of the production were as glorious as usual with Whitby, Australia and Devil’s island all beautifully recreated with great use of lighting, moving parts and, of course, visual jokes. All the great trademarks of the panto were there from Berwick’s wacky dresses, to the blacked-out UV sequence (these year a dancing bones sequence), to the pre-filmed video bit which, this time, kicked off the second act, and was a well produced section on a boat filmed in Scarborough which has, year on year, get more ambitious and more funny. Plus, Harry Gration was back in it.

There was, however, something missing and that was the usual water sequence where Kaler and Barrass end up covering each other in water in a series of contrived, but funny, water sequences. Though there was a brief bit involving tea and some in the filmed section, this funny slapstick bit was missing and I missed it.

But it was somewhat made up by the ambition of the lead dame. Not exactly a spring chicken, I thought over the last few years Berwick had been calming down his energetic role, but the amount of high-wire work he did in this production, including a sequence over a bridge involving a skateboard and a unicycle that involved him hanging in the rafters for a considerable time, plus a hilarious rendition of Swan Lake, showed he was pretty much up for anything the younger cast members would do.

Song wise they were as varied as ever and thankfully lacking some of the more cheesy sentimental tunes they’ve included in recent years. ‘England’, a riff on Westlife’s ‘My Love’, ‘Whatever Happened To My Part’ and ‘Colour My World’ were all great songs with funny lyrics and well sung by the cast even if, as usual, the words from the chorus songs got lost in the music, which was a professionally played as ever by the four musicians. Only ‘Rock-A-Hula-Zumba’ I feel wasn’t up to the other songs, but that was just one out of over a dozen classic panto tunes.

The panto was as ambitious as ever this year. The sequence with the moving boat was very impressively done as well the slapstick bed sequence with moving parts, cast members disappearing and re-appearing, plus loads of quick costume changes. What they manage to pull off each year live on stage is always worth seeing and this year was definitely no exception.

The cast, together now for many years, naturally work well off each other. Berwick Kaler, as Annie Robinson the chief dame, was as enthusiastic and funny as ever and Marin Barrass as son Jim was the perfect foil as usual. Even though ill – more on that shortly – Suzy Cooper as Rosie was as bubbly as usual, and my favour cast member – David Leonard – once more played the villain with relish.

AJ Powell, Sian Howard, Julie-Anne Castro and Jamie Harris, the latter a very welcome return, all filled out the cast well and I’m sure AJ Powell will be a future replacement for one of them when the time comes for someone to retire.

Though the best year of the pantomime there has been in the past few years, the showing I attended was also hit with problems like I’d never seen at the York one. Firstly, unavoidably, Suzy Cooper was suffering from a chest infection so had to step out of singing, performing her tune to a backing track but using a ventriloquist dummy to great effect which added more to the song than there probably would have been without it. Though, to be honest, if it hadn’t been mentioned as part of a joke, I probably wouldn’t have noticed due to her still great delivery of her lines and the puppet explanation for the song.

Elsewhere, and I label some of these as mistakes warily as the productions are known for ad-libbing mistakes in, but Berwick missed a cue early on, there were some mic problems at a couple of times and the extendable leg near the end failed to extend, but all were used as spring boards for more jokes so added to the production, it’s just unusual to see a series of such problems in a usually flawless production, but we did see it only six performances in this time so is early in the run.

In ‘The York Family Robinson’ the ‘York Theatre Royal’ has once more got a great asset in a production with some fantastic sets, great characters, fantastic jokes and songs and a panto that attracts people from all over the country. An improvement on the last few years, if you can still get a ticket it’s well worth catching for a great night of jokes. I’ve managed to get tickets for the last night this year for the first time so it’ll be interesting to see how that turns out, and how mad the final show will be!

7/10