Once a year, up and down the Kingdom, theatres turn into self-parodies. They swathe themselves in smoke and make-up, don dresses and cavort under garish and ghoulish lights. They then plunge headfirst into the politically incorrect, with the mad abandon of a dwarf under a spell. Stereotypes abound, everyone gets pointed at and ridiculed and double entendres shin their way up beanstalks with all the grace of Graham Norton. Yep, it's pantomime season.
      Out at Cockfosters (titter ye not), Chickenshed are as usual bringing us a slightly different take on the tradition. Like all good pantos their Christmas show, Grimm Nights and Everafter Days, borrows its stories from older and wiser tellers, but adds some new twists. Hanzel and Gretel, Rumpelstiltskin and Rapunzel are bundled in together, along with a witch, a queen and some musically talented animals. The tale is that of babes lost in the wild wood. Their evil stepmother wants rid of them, but the wood is on their side - this is an environmentally friendly show. Hanzel and Gretel's dad is a woodcutter with a message about protecting the forest. And the forest is a character in itself - anthropomorphised by a large ensemble, clad in camouflage and neon.
      Chickenshed are a company focused on ensemble performances. Grimm Nights and Everafter Days has a cast of 650, divided amongst four rotas, allowing everyone in the company to perform in the show. Chickenshed is 'inclusive' in every element of its ethos - comprising of both able bodied and disabled actors. Much has been put into the ensemble work for this production, including the deft incorporation of sign language. As well as the wild wood, there's also a gaggle of neo-Dickensian urchin's, two-dozen dancing brothers and sisters and a Queen's Court that transforms into her People, then her Guards. The clown-choreography of this last morphing multitude is the most humorous and satisfying.
      This is a slick show hung on a string of songs (listen out for the Fagin-esque fun of 'All that Glistens is Gold'). But a lot of it is also a little bit dull.
      The great British pantomime is a great leveller. It is traditionally a folk art form: a theatre for the common man. This means Chickenshed should be its ideal producer. But pantomime ought to be a dirty, lewd and gaudy thief - a plagiariser and pilferer, not just from fairytales, but also from newspapers and the popular culture of the day. By filtering these parts it should simplify them and make them more vivid. Yet Grimm Nights and Everafter Days refuses to drag its skirts through the mud. It needs references to the tabloids, the soaps, celebs and politicians - it needs more in there for the parents. While it may have been clean for the kids, it wasn't a family show. Chickenshed is inclusive of its performers, yet Grimm Nights and Everafter Days excluded its audience. Where was the participation, the sense of fun, the appeal to the Gods, the cries of 'he's behind you'? They could have played the same show to an empty house. A pantomime - a Christmas show - is a genre and as such it has rules, a formula without which it just doesn't quite work. Chickenshed has pulled panto's teeth and made it all a little anodyne. Grimm Nights and Everafter Days is re-worked fairytale with too much Disney and not enough Shrek.
Iona Firouzabadi