We could certainly do with a bit of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor right now, but if you’re looking for a levelling up manifesto, you won’t find it at the Coliseum. Weirdly – or should that be typically? – the only one who complains of being hard up in this pantomime is the Sheriff of Nottingham, comfortably the richest character on stage.
Played by Liz Carney in a wickedly purple suit, she is motivated entirely by the acquisition of wealth, threatening the lives of the eponymous babes and the freedom of Robin Hood in her pursuit of cash. Nobody else shows the least concern for money.
Of course, you don’t go to a panto hoping for economic analysis, but you do expect some sense of motivation. In a script by Fine Time Fontayne and director Chris Lawson, this is often absent. The show cuts corners by relying on our memory of the story, yet still gets tangled up in scenes with more exposition than action. We never get to see Robin Hood’s outlaw behaviour or what he did to infuriate the sheriff, but we do get wordy explanations about his secret inheritance and his undelivered pardon.
In the absence of anything more dramatic, Shorelle Hepkin, in the title role, can only look enthusiastic. This she does very well before throwing herself into the up-tempo pop favourites that punctuate the show, but it does mean that, instead of a folk hero, this Robin Hood is a generic good guy in an ill-defined landscape.
Part of the problem is the original story, which lacks the family dynamics of the best pantos. The dame is there in the form of Charlie Ryan’s school teacher, but without a maternal role, she is adrift in her own world. The lack of rootedness helps explain why so many of her jokes fall flat – as do those of William Travis’s Tuck and Nathan Morris’s dim-witted Failsworth, neither of whom establish the chummy rapport we need.
It boils down to a one-size-fits-all battle of good and evil, giving younger audience members plenty to shout about, but seeming more like the faded memory of a panto than a purposeful show.
• At Coliseum, Oldham, until 7 January
