Dick Whittington, London Palladium 2017

Isn't popularity subjective and a matter of perception though, George? It’s possible to detach my own personal opinion (not that I really have one, good or bad, on most of the Palladium cast). It’s really not cold hard fact that the individuals in question are popular. The same can be said of celebrity status. Apart from Paul O’Grady and Amanda Holden, the media profile of the rest of the Cinderella cast seems pretty much non-existent. Even the use of the word "celebrity" for some of them seems a stretch. For me, the only real difference between the Palladium panto cast and many high profile regional productions is that this year’s Palladium show features a greater number of names that people may recognise in a single production, whereas regional productions in the larger venues usually get only a couple of familiar faces in each.

If we compare the Palladium’s production with Snow White at my local venue, the Liverpool Empire, for example, the latter has had Jorgie Porter in the title role this Christmas. Jorgie’s casting has got the production a fair amount of press coverage (rather bizarrely, what she’s wearing as she leaves stage door is deemed to be newsworthy), while she has an association with the city through her role in Hollyoaks and has also appeared in the likes of I’m A Celebrity and Dancing on Ice. I’m not saying that Jorgie’s casting was an incredible coup for the theatre but I don’t believe that taking any of the names from the Palladium production and adding them to the Empire‘s line-up in Jorgie's place would have triggered an uplift in ticket sales or press attention, with the possible exception of Paul O’Grady who would have gone down a storm in Liverpool (probably more so than any other city). Incidentally, the Empire has confirmed that Snow White has enjoyed record ticket sales and has been the most successful pantomime in its history so they must have got something right. Even without Nigel Havers!

I expect that Dick Whittington at the Palladium will get the usual mix of well-known and fairly well-known faces in the principal roles, the vast majority of whom are equally as likely to be appearing in individual productions up and down the country. The idea that the Palladium has access to an extensive directory of so-called A-list celebrities, that other pantomimes can only dream of, really doesn’t stack up for me. We’ll have to agree to disagree!