After nearly 30 years, pantomime has returned to the Palladium. Just to drive the news home, the show’s first musical number is all about it. And the second. One of the main backdrops is of a panto version of Argyll Street, with the Palladium dead centre and the actual setting, Cinders’ home Hardup Hall, off to one side. Not to put too fine a point on it, this is a very self-conscious show.

For ages the Palladium was a byword for lavish variety presentations, and these are the values of Michael Harrison’s production rather than the solid, silly family entertainment we now expect of panto. So, no messy “slosh” scene, but a ten-minute “spesh” (panto argot for a speciality act) in which ventriloquist Paul Zerdin as Buttons puts words into a couple of audience members’ mouths. No men in ridiculous frocks as the Ugly Sisters, for here they must not compete with their mother, the wicked baroness, played by Paul O’Grady in one of his increasingly rare returns to drag since the days of Lily Savage. A clutch of names from musical theatre (Natasha J Barnes and Lee Mead as Cinders and Prince Charming respectively), showbiz glitterati (Amanda Holden as the Fairy Godmother) and aristocracy (Nigel Havers as, more or less, himself in a tricorn hat) appear, with plenty of opportunistic and gratuitous musical numbers. The script credit indicates that the show is basically assembled from a series of individual routines.

The philosophy seems to be that enjoyment derives from attending this prestigious event rather than from, you know, watching it. The kids are blithely overlooked. I don’t for a moment believe it’s morally wrong to expose little ’uns to the kind of comic filth peddled by Julian Clary as the Prince’s equerry Dandini (who gets far more stage time and extravagant threads than his boss), just that such filth is incomprehensible to them and rapidly grows boring. From the family point of view, no panto should be longer than an hour or so each way; here, by the time some children are invited onstage for a singalong, they’ve been in the theatre for three hours. It’s sumptuous, it’s glittering, but it’s too long, too family-unfriendly and kinda misses the panto point. Tradition has moved on.

Written for the Financial Times.