Dames Without Frontiers

What are your Christmas traditions? Baileys for Breakfast? A whole chocolate orange in front of a Hallmark Channel movie?

The Micheal Buble Christmas Album?

All three of those are bad for your health but if going to the annual Christmas panto at the Theatre Royal is not on your list then get involved as this is an experience to enrich mind, body and spirit

This year the traditional tale is Snow White and the Seven Dwarves starring Olivia Birchenough as the fairest of them all,  who when not treading the boards is presenting the Children’s entertainment show ‘Milkshake’ on Channel 5. As Snow White, her milkshake brings all the boys to the yard, and one boy in particular is Prince Fredrick of Frome,  played by George Olney, he’s travelled down the A36 because the Cheese and Grain doesn’t have a Panto, and while out for a walk in the woods they meet and the story progresses

There have been several royal scandals in recent times and continuing this theme is Emma Norman in the role of ‘Girl boss’ Queen Grimelda who seeks regular reassurance from her vanity mirror and finds herself needing to ‘couple up’ with Prince Fredrick to help with her own ‘cost of living’ crisis. Using this narrative the regular story unfolds when the Queen seeing Snow White as the third wheel and gets fruit involved to try and leave the field clear for herself with the Prince.

Also on hand to make sure the panto does what it says on the tin are Friends of Radio Bath’s Bath Laugh Marathon show on a Friday evening, Bath panto royalty, Jon Monie who plays Muddles and Nick Wilton who plays Dame Dilly Donught, a character that has more costume changes than Tom Daley. Then, of course, there are dwarves, even in a contemporary pantomime there are still seven of them but they aren’t bashful and dopey any longer, they are now things like snotty, stroppy and cheeky

The whole thing is a warm hug, especially if you, like myself have memories of seeing pantomime as a child and being convinced that the character on stage really was the dumbest person in the world because no matter how many people told them to look behind, they still couldn’t see the thing they  were trying to find/avoid

A highlight of the show is the ’12 Days of Christmas’ set piece which  is an absolute joy and, as part of the wider piece, brings a bit of theatre magic at a time of year that appreciates it the most

In short, the question is how can you get some heartwarming family entertainment out of a story containing diamonds, slavery and attempted murder?

That’s Snowbusiness!