Will she? Won’t she? Never mind the fact that Kiera Knightley is currently in previews for her West End debut in The Misanthrope next Thursday, there’s a far more significant one next Tuesday: Pamela Anderson is due to begin her run as the Genie of the Lamp amongst the rotating quartet of stars sharing the role at the New Wimbledon Theatre in Aladdin.
But according to yesterday’s Londoners’ Diary in the Standard, she “hasn’t even started rehearsals, isn’t in the country and her first expected appearance is on Tuesday. A source at the heart of the production says, ‘We’re holding our breath’.”
And so, too, are fellow members of the Critics’ Circle. We already have several competing claims on our attention, not least the RSC, who are opening Dominic Cooke’s production of Arabian Nights at Stratford-upon-Avon that night, and have been offering critics the chance to attend the night before instead. Who’d have thought that the RSC would be upstaged by Pamela Anderson?
Then there’s Sandi Toksvig’s Christmas Cracker, which was announced back in September, and will be running at the Royal Festival Hall for only ten nights. And then there’s also Bill Kenwright’s production of A Daughter’s A Daughter — written by Agatha Christie under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott — which was only announced on November 20 to open at the Trafalgar Studios that night, too.
The fact that I can’t be everywhere is a recurring theme of this blog, and Christmas always turns out to be particularly fraught: at no other time is there the density of consecutive openings as now, though of course there’s no need to get to each and every panto.
But there’s clearly news value in Pamela Anderson, even if the theatrical curiosity of a previously unseen Agatha Christie play might also have a claim to that, too. It’s easy for the papers with multiple critics; the paper, if not the individual critics, can happily be in two, or more, places at once. But for a sole operator like me, I have to juggle things around subsequent days and nights instead. Next week, however, there are also major openings on Wednesday (with Rope at the Almeida) and Thursday (the aforementioned The Misanthrope) so those nights are out, and Wednesday also has an additional opening when the National open Katie Mitchell’s production of The Cat in the Hat during the daytime, too.
Bill Kenwright, faced with this difficulty, has now added a Tuesday matinee to next week’s run of A Daughter’s A Daughter for critics to be able to attend before they head elsewhere. That’s one practical solution for some, though it doesn’t help me: I have a regular weekly appointment with my personal fitness trainer, and sometimes real life has to take precedence over my already overstuffed theatrical one.
So I’ve come to a different arrangement to squeeze it all in, and am being allowed in to the first and only preview of A Daughter’s A Daughter the night before. That means I can be at the Royal Festival Hall on Tuesday, and will head to Wimbledon for Pamela Anderson on Thursday afternoon, before heading back to town that evening for The Misanthrope. Phew! I am already exhausted just thinking about it. But I am also exhausted from the to-ing and fro-ing that has been required to set it all up.
No wonder everyone gets cranky at this time of year. It’s even affecting the stars - on Wednesday, the Daily Mirror reported that Su Pollard, in Bournemouth to star as the Wicked Witch in Snow White, got into an altercation with a disabled driver who had bumped the taxi she was in and launched what was billed as “a foul-mouthed tirade” against her.
The Guardian points out today that this time last year it was Linda Lusardi who was starring in a panto in High Wycombe, and dialled 999 to “ask whether she could use the hard shoulder of the M25 as she was late for a performance. After the emergency services condemned this waste of their time, Linda responded furiously that ‘I was brought up to believe that was the number to call if you needed police assistance’.” As the Guardian goes on to say, “It will not have escaped your attention that both artistes were playing the Wicked Queen. And while in some ways that’s to be expected - Pollard’s never exactly been principal boy material, and even Linda’s fairy-godmother days are well behind her - has the time come to ask whether this role places simply too many psychological demands on those method villainesses required to inhabit it?”
Perhaps they should be alternating instead with Pamela Anderson as the Genie of the Lamp in Aladdin. Mind you, that comes with its own demands. As Ruby Wax, who is currently playing the part until Sunday, said in an interview reprinted in the Surrey Comet, “I again am playing Pamela Anderson’s body double. She is only doing two weeks, but since we are indistinguishable I have said OK I’ll do her for another week.” Anita Dobson and Paul O’Grady, in turn, take over from Anderson.
The full-time cast also includes Brian Blessed. Perhaps journalist and biographer Roger Lewis should see it. When he saw The Lord of the Rings in 2007, he wrote in his annual, famously curmudgeonly Christmas letter, ” It was so bad and portentous I thought Brian Blessed was in it.”
Pamela Anderson cancels first two panto performances. Why stop there?
"Panto might well seem kitsch and peculiar and naff and terribly easy, but it really isn't."
"Sandi Toksvig’s Christmas Cracker, which was announced back in September" - only patchily, if so. The first I heard of it was in a mail from the PR a week ago. "A Daughter's A Daughter" took a further three days for first word to reach me, barely a week before opening night. After I'd explained that neither Sarah Hemming nor I had any gaps in our schedule nor did the FT's arts page have room to squeeze a show in at such late notice, the PR for the latter show then inquired whether, since we wouldn't be able to see it, we could just make it a Pick of the Week...