Northern lights full of laughs

ALADDIN, Opera House, Manchester, by Paul Genty
For years, the Manchester pantos have concentrated on big names and flashy sets but have often missed out on the comfortable, familiar anarchy that makes good panto great fun.

This year pretty much puts things right: this Aladdin is glossy and large, but massively scales up the qualities that really count: fun, warmth and laughs. Three people are mainly responsible.

Eric Potts, who returns to the area with his toweringly male, gloriously butch Widow Twankey and sets the mad tone by also writing and directing. Eric’s years as Coliseum dame might be behind him, but at least his Corrie fame means bigger audiences all over the country get to see him play dame.

Mike McClean, a Levenshulme comic, has built up masses of experience in TV, radio and panto for years, every minute of it reflected in the extraordinarily easy way he commands adult and child alike. Great jokes, even better timing and intimate familiarity with the job in hand go into his highlight, a brilliant front-of-curtain scene with three children from the audience. Here is one of the great panto comedians of the moment, enjoying himself to the full.

The lovely Sue Devaney, whose impeccable comic timing is to the fore in what is normally the minor role of Genie of the Ring, built up by Potts to give her third-comic status alongside himself and McClean; a chance she grabs with both hands.

The Opera House show also has a complement of celebs who this year actually get it: Corrie’s Gray O’Brien switches from Tony “Evil” Gordon to Abanazar with a leer here and a ham accent there, and has a great time telling the crowd to shut up. “Hollyoaks” hunk Chris Fountain — never more than a layer away from stripped to the waist — has fun in his first panto and knows what he is there to do, which can’t always be said . . .

What Potts brings most, both as actor and director, is a very Northern feel. Some slick pantos are put together by highly professional London TV directors who beat the soul out of the show and fill it with special effects. Eric puts in daft jokes, funny routines, silliness for the children and a little coarseness for the mums and dads.

I can’t remember enjoying a city panto as much since those of Jim Davidson and Billy Pearce, well over a decade ago. More please.