Theatre

PUNocchio

Oran Mor, Glasgow

Mary Brennan

four stars

BY now, you’ll have had your plays. And your mini-musicals, too. So what better than a panto, to add some relish to the lunchtime pie and some cheery froth to the pint? Given that so much of what is passing for politics on both sides of the Atlantic is descending beyond satire into farce, this entertainingly fresh, nippily topical PUNocchio is a real tribute to the wily wits of writer Gary McNair, his mischievous humour ably supported by music-man Dave Anderson and director Ron Bain.

Anderson, in mock-winsome mode, is a Dame bemused – Tories? in Shettleston? – and bereft of companionship. If only the Fairy Odd Mother (a diva-tastic Darren Brownlie) could magic Daniel O’Donnell – what a doll, eh? – into her life then she wouldn’t need to carve wooden puppets. Such dreams are beyond Oran Mor budgets, so instead a gung-ho Frances Thorburn benefits from Brownlie’s wand and becomes PUNocchio, a wee boy full of bad puns. Not even his conscience, Hingmy Cricket (Kirstin McLean, an archly dapper-patter dude) can halt the dire wordplay, or PUNocchio’s reality check as a liar. If the “noes” failed to carry the recent vote on the Queen’s Speech, the nose that grows on PUNocchio carries all before it. No need for graphic quips, no need for ribald asides: the increasingly long, pink and waggly snout is a visual gag-book in its own right.

As we’ve come to expect from the Oran Mor summer panto, there’s an undertow of mickey-taking at the expense of politicians – Anderson’s Trumpoli, Brownlie’s Faragio the Cat (who doesn’t like incomers) and McLean’s Bear-is Johnson contribute nicely spoofing repartee to a story-line that flags up various reasons why PUNocchio might not want to be a real boy in today’s world after all. But optimism, cracking song and dance routines and an irresistibly full-on cast win him, and us, through to the final singalong chorus.