Circa Theatre
Nov 18-Dec 23, Jan 3-Feb 3 | Reviewed by Justin Gregory

YEP, it’s a pantomime, alright – with plenty of in-jokes, bad puns and mild sexual innuendo, and if that’s not what you want, then don’t go. Because Aladdin is all-singing, all dancing, sweetness and light panto.

Playwright Roger Hall lays the traditional Far-Eastern fable as a Wellington tale. In Old Araby – you know, the one at the top of Cuba Street – Aladdin and his mum Widow Twankey spend their days washing other people’s laundry, dodging the Bucket Fountain and dreaming about true love. Aladdin loves the Sultan’s daughter Jasmine, but his chances of marrying her on his wages are pretty thin. He needs money and fast. Enter arch-baddy Abanazar with a proposition. You know the story from there.

Herald Theatre
Nov 30-Dec 10 | Reviewed by Imogen Neale

SHE WALKS on to the stage, a cumbersomely packed plastic bag in each hand. Shuffling towards the stage, her stilted movements are befitting of someone with at least forty years on her twenty-something. She plonks herself down and reaches into one of the plastic bags; out comes a packet of hamburger buns, a sponger cake (un-iced) and tomato sauce. Off comes the stiff plastic casing from the sponge cake; she takes a bite, the sugar triggering a compulsion to talk. Talk about nothing, everything, something, why it is that she is sitting here talking and eating and eating.