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O, Brave New World! Play in 2 Days

Thu 07 Jun - Fri 08 Jun

As You Like It - As You Want It

Sat 09 Jun

Script Factor All Winners Final

Mon 02 Jul

As You Like It - As You Want It

Sat 09 Jun

Little Feet - The Owl and the Pussycat

Wed 20 Jun

Little Feet - Hare and Tortoise

Thu 21 Jun

Little Feet - The Devil, The Tsar & The Three Dry Biscuits

Fri 22 Jun

Little Feet - Tiddler and Other Terrific Tales

Fri 22 Jun - Sat 23 Jun

The Reduced Shakespeare Company in The Complete World of Sports (abridged)

Wed 13 Jun - Sat 16 Jun

Andrew Motion - Silver: Return to Treasure Island

Wed 30 May

Little Feet - The Owl and the Pussycat

Wed 20 Jun

Little Feet - Hare and Tortoise

Thu 21 Jun

Little Feet - The Devil, The Tsar & The Three Dry Biscuits

Fri 22 Jun

Little Feet - Tiddler and Other Terrific Tales

Fri 22 Jun - Sat 23 Jun

Script Factor All Winners Final

Mon 02 Jul

Script Factor All Winners Final

Mon 02 Jul

Script Factor All Winners Final

Mon 02 Jul

Disobedience - Chris T-T sings A.A. Milne

Tue 05 Jun

The Al Morrison Blues Experience feat. Juliet Roberts

Fri 17 Aug

Pee Wee Ellis JazzFunk Assembly

Fri 24 Aug

The South African Gospel Singers

Sat 25 Aug

Little Feet - Hare and Tortoise

Thu 21 Jun

Little Feet - The Devil, The Tsar & The Three Dry Biscuits

Fri 22 Jun

Little Feet - Tiddler and Other Terrific Tales

Fri 22 Jun - Sat 23 Jun

Frantic Assembly Devising and Physicality Workshop

Sat 02 Jun

Frantic Assembly Devising and Physicality Workshop

Sat 02 Jun

O, Brave New World! Play in 2 Days

Thu 07 Jun - Fri 08 Jun

As You Like It - As You Want It

Sat 09 Jun

Phil Penfold: Review - The York Family Robinson

Tue 20 Dec 2011

Written by Phil Penfold

Here it is, the annual load of old rubbish. Total twaddle from beginning to end, a farrago of jokes so ancient that they have grown whiskers that brush their ankles, wrinkled routines cobbled together from the mists of time. And what a glorious, hilarious, and unstoppable show it is.

The thing about Berwick Kaler’s annual productions at the Royal – he stars in them, writes them (presumably when he’s had a few pints of the brown liquid from Newcastle?) and co-directs them – is that they are unashamedly in-your-face outrageous. If you seek charm and subtlety, then you’d be better off searching somewhere else. Kaler and Co. run rampant through any logic, defeat reason, and still emerge with the best panto anywhere in Yorkshire – or, come to that, Great Britain.

Where would Christmas be without the York panto? It would certainly be a much duller, far quieter affair. This show is now part of the regional calendar. Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without a romp at the Royal. It’s as much embedded in the Christmas tradition as The Queen’s Speech, over-cooked sprouts, and granny’s teeth falling out when she nods off after lunch.

This year’s alleged “plot” concerns the Robinson family setting sail for Australia to revive their fortunes, and to keep their circus in business. What has that to do with the time of year? Nowt. But it is an ingeniously daft idea, and allows all Mr. Kaler’s colleagues to let their hair down and to be splendidly daft. For once again Mr. Panto has gathered his gaggle of stalwarts around him, and encourages them to be as completely barmpot as he is. There’s the chortling Suzy Cooper as Rosie Robinson, Martin Barrass as Jim, David Leonard as a spawn of the horned one, A J Powell as the Brummie Robinson Caruso (that’s right, Caruso – not Crusoe) and Sian Howard as a helmeted, suited and booted Britannia as well as the leader of an Ozzie feminist commune. Pick the bones out of that casserole.

And Kaler has also involved two relative newcomers to this happy team, Julie-Anna Castro as a curvaceous Man Friday, and Jamie Harris as a sort of junior John Inman, playing Jolly Roger, who mines fields of camp with an eyebrow-raising fallen archness. Pause even for a second to dwell on what passes for a story, and you are totally lost. Concentrate instead on the gloriously bandbox-fresh set and costumes (from Phil R Daniels and Charles Cusick Smith) and Richard G Jones’ Technicolor lighting.

The dancers have enough energy to light up the York Eye, Rob Thorne Jr. belts his band through a new score with vigour, and it all becomes an unstoppable and at many points hysterical experience. Kaler’s frocks – this year he’s giving us his Annie Robinson – are as zany as ever, and his double-entendre twinkle in the eyes is undimmed. Beg, steal, borrow a ticket. If you can, buy one. You simply won’t find a better, or more efficaciously effective, tonic.