Panto review: Aladdin – SEC Armadillo

First published in The Times, Thursday December 16 2021

Three Stars

Aladdin is one of the most reliable pantomime stories of all time, but this one seems to be suffering from an identity crisis. Are we in old Peking, the Middle East or somewhere closer to home? Is Abanazar (Sanjeev Kohli) a villain in the louche George Sanders mode, or is it just loveable Navid from the BBC sitcom Still Game? Even the hero, whom everyone else on stage calls Aladdin, would rather go by the more prosaic moniker of Gary.

Review: Still Game Live 2 – SSE Hydro, Glasgow

First published in The Times, Monday February 6 2017

Three Stars

“We’re gonnae keep it real this time,” says Jack (Ford Kiernan) at the start of this second live outing for the Glasgow sitcom, a nod to the dazzling Bollywood song-and-dance number that brought the curtain (and the house) down at the end of the first incarnation of Still Game Live, back in 2014.

 

Predictably, Jack’s claim of going back to comedy basics is undermined almost immediately when Navid (Sanjeev Kohli) appears, floating on a magic carpet above the counter in Harrid’s convenience store. Isa (Jane McCarry) makes her entrance, with sparks shooting out of the end of her mop. Winston (Paul Riley) arrives, flying from wires, Peter Pan-style, while Tam (Mark Cox) fires himself out of a cannon. The crowd in the 12,000-seat Hydro goes wild.