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This year’s Olympia panto has all the ingredients: a Eurovision winner (Linda Martin), a whip-sharp panto dame (Al Porter), a wisecracking genie (Simon Delaney), and a boyband (Hometown) - it just takes a while for them to come together.
This is the first night for Aladdin, but there are no onstage disasters: the magic carpet stays up in the air, Linda Martin’s vertiginous headdress doesn’t collapse, and any missed cues or fluffed lines are handled with aplomb by Porter, who’s well bedded into the Olympia panto after seven years on the trot.
Aladdin is played with boyish charm by Fair City's Ryan Andrews, and Ciara Lyons is fragrant if a little flimsy as Princess Jasmine. Of course, it's now a requirement of law for every panto princess to sing Let It Go, but here Lyons goes for a more restrained reading of the Disney tune.
The most physically demanding role is that of Jafar, Aladdin's archrival for the hand of Jasmine (Played by Rob Vickers). He spends most of the panto on his knees, with two false short legs strapped to his thighs. The result is a look not unlike King Farquaad in Shrek. Martin plays his scheming, manipulative mother, Get Lucky, but luckily she doesn't sing the Daft Punk song; instead, she and Jafar join up for a deliciously dastardly duet of Bat Out of Hell.
Parachuted into the whole Arabian Nights setting is Louis Walsh’s new boyband Hometown. It’s usually near the end of their career that a band would do panto, but at least Hometown are getting some valuable experience at working a crowd. Walsh also lends his voice to a running gag around X Factor.
When Simon Delaney finally appears as the Genie just before the interval, he injects some good, old-fashioned Rat Pack flair into the show, and though he’s quick to admit onstage that he’s not much of a singer, he makes up for it with presence and quickfire humour.
Gags about water charges, Joan Burton's travails in Jobstown, and Twink's recent exit from the Limerick panto go down well with the crowd, although a gag about prostate examinations and rhyme involving a Love/Hate character and a pool cue may have caused some involuntary tightening.
So, a bit of a hotchpotch, but worth putting on your wishlist.
