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Cinderella, SEC Armadillo Glasgow, review: Wee Jimmy Krankie makes this a panto less ordinary

Oh no they didn't: The Krankies in Cinderella
Oh no they didn't: The Krankies in Cinderella

Scotland’s flourishing Christmas theatre tradition puts a premium on the pantomime dame. Things are slightly different at the country’s biggest panto, at the SEC Armadillo, however. Here, the star of the show is not a bloke in a frock, but a 71-year-old woman dressed as a little boy.

This year’s SEC offering, Cinderella, has the glitzy production values and the high-kicking glamour one would expect of a big stage Christmas show. However, it’s Janette Tough (aka “Wee Jimmy Krankie”) who makes it a panto less ordinary.

Starring alongside husband and long-time showbiz partner Ian, the septuagenarian Janette is still at the top of her game. Playing the role of Buttons (dogsbody to Ian’s Baron Hardup), she pursues Gemma Lawson’s golden-voiced Cinderella with an ill-fated gusto.

As if to prove the vaudevillian roots of pantomime, the funniest moments come in the old-style music hall routines. This ranges from Wee Jimmy singing his signature song Picking on Me to Janette (in school shorts and blazer) being thrown around like a ragdoll by Ian in the Krankies’ evergreen comic number Funny Boy.

As ever with this experienced double act, lines are slipped occasionally, prompting adroit and genuinely hilarious ad-libbing. There’s also a slightly edgy riposte to the political correctness police.

Just three years after she was criticised for giving a “yellowface” performance (as male Japanese fashion designer Huki Muki) in the Absolutely Fabulous movie, Janette returns to east Asian caricature as North Korean dictator Kim Jung-un. Not only is the skit, in which she and Ian (who gives a dodgy Donald Trump impersonation) sing a song about Kim being a “rocket man”, racially dubious, it also isn’t very funny.

If the Krankies – and Janette in particular – top the bill, they are ably supported by much-loved comic actors of TV and stage Gavin Mitchell and Jonathan Watson as Cinders’ ugly stepsisters Hinger and Minger. With repartee as lurid as their increasingly outrageous costumes, the pair are as boo-inducingly humorous as they are repulsive.

There are strong, vocally impressive performances from Frances Thorburn (Fairy Alice), Keith Jack (Prince Charming) and Peter Vint (Dandini). There’s spectacle, too, with Cinders flying above the audience in her magical pumpkin carriage.  

However, if the SEC panto deserves top billing in Scotland this Christmas, that is down, first-and-foremost, to the still high-energy antics of Wee Jimmy Krankie.

Until December 30