Hackney Empire Panto shows the best of London…
From the Evening Standard 23-12-09
For anyone in need of cheer this Christmas, I prescribe the Hackney Empire’s pantomime, Aladdin. It is a celebration of the civilised values, a defence of diversity and multiculturalism that makes you proud to be a Londoner.
The main character, Aladdin, is half-Arabian and half-Chinese, yet somehow white. He and his possibly gay brother, Wishy-Washy, grew up in a single-parent family — that single parent being a black transvestite called Widow Twankey. All are the subjects of a possibly mentally ill African queen who is also a cockney and engaged in a sort of ménage à trois with two northern policemen. It’s not that no one bats an eyelid at these set-ups — they make an un-PC joke and move on. “It skipped a generation,” quips Clive Rowe’s magnificent Twankey, referring to the whiteness of his two sons.
Despite the yearly exhortations of the Evening Standard’s pantomime critic, I had never before seen this highly praised local entertainment, mainly because I am not nine years old.
This year, however, I had a nine-year-old to take. In May, I applied to become a volunteer with Chance UK (http://www.chanceuk.com), a charity that provides mentors for primary school-aged children with behavioural difficulties in Islington, Hackney and Lambeth. Its credentials were impressive: its programme produces a 98 per cent improvement rate in children’s behaviour after a year’s mentoring.
After attending a recruitment session I completed training over three Saturdays in May and in August and was paired with a very bright and sweet boy who was having trouble dealing with an absent father and had been threatened with exclusion from school.
It was the best decision I have made this year. My Saturday mornings were previously spent in a grumpy stupor. Now I kick footballs around, visit museums, go ice-skating and play armies in the undergrowth. It doesn’t feel like any sacrifice at all — I always come away in an excellent mood — but in a small way, it makes a difference. You can tell, week by week.
I had for a long time wanted to do something of this kind, but this was the year I finally did. Why? A long list of wishy-washy liberal clichés I’m afraid —reading Barack Obama’s book, watching The Wire, finding my priorities shifting towards an idea of public service, as many have found in the recession. But I think most pressing was a growing sensation that you can live in as socially and economically diverse a borough as Hackney and operate solely within a very small and comfortable bracket of it.
Watching Aladdin with a nine-year-old, who no one could have mistaken for a relation of mine, among a raucous audience was to experience all of those parallel worlds coalescing.
And do you know, for all his behavioural difficulties, my lad did not once call out “It’s f***ing behind you” — as 26-year-old Amy Winehouse did when she saw Cinderella this weekend.
December 23 2009
