Paul Chuckle and Nigel Ellacott have over one hundred years of pantomime experience between them and have continued to take on the annual challenge of twelve shows a week each Christmas, despite losing their stage partners of many years. Paul’s brother Barry died in 2018 and Nigel’s stage partner Peter Robbins died in 2009. This year brings the two together in the New Victoria Theatre Woking’s version of Peter Pan and if you have not seen either of them before, you are in for a comic treat. If you have seen their acts before, it is a nostalgic revisit of so many of their classic routines and their favourite pantomime jokes.

The Chuckle Brothers performed together for half a century and Paul has continued to perform the same routines with new partners each year since his brother’s death. The routines are honed by years of repetition and guaranteed to generate plenty of laughs. He starts with his shopping trolley with “I have got some treats for you” throwing out sweets to a baying audience in an easy warm up routine. He follows up with the costume adjustment routine and cucumber slicing magic trick with Strictly Come Dancing’s Anton Du Beke as his willing stooge. They join together with Peter Pan and Captain Hook for a classic version of the ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’ with, of course, five toilet rolls flung into the audience. He closes the show with four members of the audience for his Goldilocks and the Three Bears slosh scene, a simple set up that is delivered with consummate skill and timing. If you have not seen them before, they are masterful variety routines that he and the producers know work every time. They have absolutely nothing to do with Peter Pan of course, and indeed are included each year whatever the title.

Nigel Ellacott too has established pantomime routines and jokes that he knows work well with the pantomime audiences and he delivers with a calm comic timing dressed in a succession of superb witty costumes. Whether dressed in a beautiful blue sparkly ball gown, as a deck chair, as an inflated ball, Tropicana outfit, or a picnic basket, he sashays across the forestage to deliver his favourite gags with a wonderful flourish of fluttering eyelids to acknowledge the innuendo. His trademark Dame’s bedtime strip is elegant and amusing, especially when he acknowledges the poor gentleman in the front row whom much of his material is delivered to. In this show, he plays Mrs Smee although, as with Chuckle’s Starkey, the character name is virtually irrelevant.

Anton Du Beke plays Smee, the Dame’s son and he makes sure he gets his chance to do his turn. His mere presence grinning and twinkling at the audience is enough for Strictly fans and he does get a chance to “dance like a movie star” towards the end of Act One with a flowing musical theatre top hat and tails dance number. He also shows he is a good sport in supporting the rest of the cast and has good comic timing in a slick animated lip sync routine with Hook and a very old Mastermind routine with Hook and Starkey that starts with “what is the capital of Poland”, “P”. The three together generate plenty of smiles, loads of groans at old jokes and a few laugh out loud moments. It is reminiscent of days when the great variety stars toured the country, delivering the same routine each night in the knowledge that it worked and that many liked to see the familiar material.

There is so much business to squeeze in during the two-hour running time (including interval) that the linking story of Peter Pan is thrown in at a breakneck pace and although JM Barrie’s characters are present on stage, the subtlety and nuance of the fabulous story of youthful innocence is lost. The beautiful nursery setting that opens the show is gone within five minutes without any appearance from Mr and Mrs Darling or the search for the lost shadow. In no time, we are in Neverland with some very grown up looking lost boys and Wendy (a good professional debut from Chloe Riley) is not shot from the sky by one of them but walks on from stage right.

It is left to Peter Pan (an energetic Archie Durrant), Tinkerbell (Georgia Brierley- Smith on roller skates) and Hook (Bob Harms in a magnificent wig and costume) to play out the remaining story. There are two very well-choreographed sword fight scenes, a large crocodile head and some flying acrobatics to symbolise the basic story of the battle between good and evil or youth and adulthood and some pretty sets, attractive lighting, and a few pyros to add to those pictures. Indeed, with a band of six and ensemble of eight, the production values are high, and the show looks good.

If you have not been to the theatre recently or are taking a child to their first pantomime, then you are sure to enjoy this variety show and its professional faultless delivery but if you enjoy storytelling with strong narratives or pantomime where the music and comedy flows out of that narrative to further the tale, sprinkled with topicality and a sense of society today, this may be a little disappointing. The future of pantomime as a genre depends on innovation and reinvention for when these seasoned professionals finally retire, and we will miss their highly practiced routines, where will we find the same stage experience to refresh the talent pool and reinvent the genre for the society of today. In the meantime, you can say “Hellooo” to this high-flying adventure and see Paul Chuckle delivering, as you would expect, “to me, to you”.

*** Three stars

Reviewed by: Nick Wayne

Peter Pan plays at the New Victoria Theatre Woking until 7 January 2024, with tickets available here.