Review: Twinkle, Little Star, The Studio, York Theatre Royal, until April 19

2:06pm Thursday 3rd April 2008

"TO be good at pantomime, you have to be a good actor," says Kenneth Alan Taylor, and he should know.

Taylor is the Berwick Kaler of the Nottingham Playhouse, who has recently completed his 24th season as the dame, in Dick Whittington.

He is playing the dame once more in York Theatre Royal and Nottingham Lakeside's co-production of Philip Meeks's real-time monologue, a revenge comedy inspired apparently by John Inman, first played with rather more cruelty by Tim Healy in condensed (but sour milk) form at the 2006 Edinburgh Fringe and now given its 90-minute full treatment by the veteran Taylor.

This is not a show for children, as Taylor's opening invective will testify, when the shadow of Taylor's Harold Thropp can be seen in the door of the dingy basement dressing room - designed by Mark Walters like a traditional, painted panto set - to which this gay, grey dame has been consigned, much to his curmudgeonly disgust.

The fictional, but all too real Thropp, former electrician's apprentice, was once the youngest dame in the land, six-inch heels and all, but that bright spark has faded, and last year was the limit, when he was humiliated by reality TV upstart Jez Buckham (the surname's echo of Beckham may not be unintentional in this age of celebrity obsession).

As the ageing Thropp prepares for the start of his final pantomime season as Widow Twankey, he opens his suitcase of memories, reveals tips on the dame's art - always wear two pairs of tights for the perfect legs - and applies his exaggerated make-up while recalling his life's path to his reduced status of fewer costume changes, axed speciality act and replacement in the songsheet routine by a rap number.

What is now behind him in pantomime is his future, but he is scared to move on, and sipping on his brandy, he plots his shocking revenge - the play's final twist - while pontificating on political correctness, fondly remembering his Fifties cottaging days of "Saturday night at the lavvies", not so fondly remembering his mother and still his missing his late true love, Eric.

Taylor has previously performed Samuel Beckett's solo show Krapp's Last Tape, another portrait of age wrapped in memories, and there is something of Beckett in both Meeks's waspish, grumpy writing and Taylor's tragicomic, bleakly amusing acting in Matt Aston and Damian Cruden's superb production.

Box office: 01904 623568

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