Oh Yes I Did - - at 10.30 This Morning!

"Experience Wakefield" says the sign next to the Theatre Royal. Well, today I had a whole new experience- seeing a pantomime at 10.30am!

There are three shows today: 10.30am, 2pm and 7pm - a lot of hard work for the cast in a very physical show.

We had gone to see Beauty and the Beast because Jill Myers, who's in the actors' agency that I work for, is playing Modestine, one of Beauty's two wicked sisters. I liked the description in the programme: "Jill is delighted to be returning to Theatre Royal Wakefield for a third festive season of wickedness after previously enjoying being particularly evil in Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella."

The pantomimes at Wakefield are always good - sadly I missed Cinderella last year because of the Communist's illness, but Jill was a fantastic Bad Fairy in Sleeping Beauty the year before and she was absolutely terrific in today's show - I thought the two wicked sisters' double-act was the best thing in it, even though I know I'm biased!

I'm slightly relieved that Jill won't be at tomorrow's agency meeting, however - she has two more shows tomorrow - as I'm getting slightly concerned by how swiftly and naturally she becomes the embodiment of evil, even though it does seem to involve a lot of comedy, singing and dancing.

This wasn't quite a traditional panto, unlike the also-excellent Aladdin which I saw in Middlesbrough a couple of weeks back - it was halfway between a panto and a musical play and one or two romantic numbers lost the attention of the tinies in the audience - though, of course, at 10.30am there were many, many little ones as they're the only ones really awake at that time on a Saturday!

Again, like the Middlesbrough panto, it looked fantastic with lovely bright colours and lush costumes and plenty of costume changes for the Dame. My favourite line in it was that every time the Wicked Sisters were about to do something really nasty, someone would say "No way!" to them and they would always reply with "Yes way!"

At the end - - and I'm so sorry if this spoils the plot for you, like the review I read yesterday of the new film The Reader where the reviewer gave away every inch of the plot, damn him - the Wicked Sisters end up working in the kitchens. "No way!" they say. "Yes way!" they are told. I like a bit of justice in the world, and there so rarely is any.

I plan one more Proper Panto this Christmas and that's Cinderella at the Bradford Alhambra - another traditional theatre, where a friend of mine, Jay Worthy, is an Ugly Sister. And then the panto season will be - - er - - behind me.

Britain in winter, eh? The weather's rubbish. But the pantomimes are great.