Writer: Joshua Coley
Director: Sasha Regan
Seen in the run-up to last Christmas as the final production at the Turbine Theatre, Joshua Coley’s adult panto The Liar, the Bitch and the Wardrobe finds a new home this festive season at the Union Theatre.
Escaping helicopter mothers and the threat of the London Blitz, two jejune 18-year-old refugee lads plunge into a parody of CS Lewis’s Narnia, where they encounter such delightfully rustic characters as Mr Topless, The Hungry Beaver, The Wicked Bitch, and perhaps most evocatively, Arse-lan The Gape. It is not exactly high-brow stuff, but intellectual stimulation is not the point of the evening. For those inclined, a stiff one on entry will smooth the evening’s passage.
It is 1939. Edward (Joe Pieri) and his budding boyfriend, Peter (James Georgiou), find the South London blackout to be good cover for some back-street canoodling, with the constant threat of bombing adding a dash of excitement to their energetic coupling. Their mothers, worried that “modern parenting has made them a bit fruity”, evacuate the pair to Babs Douche’s Boarding School for Bad Butch Boys, where they are to be taught the finer points of heteronormative masculinity. “We’re big boys, we can look after ourselves,” the boys protest, gasmasks in hand and dressed in stylish black shorts and tweed jackets. Sadly, the women, whose relationship may or may not have a frisky side, are not for changing.
Babs (Tom Duern is a delight in all the panto dame roles) describes herself as “thin and emotionally unavailable”, a state she believes affords her a level of affinity with gay men. Babs invites us to help “pray the gay away” to the tune of Village People’s YMCA, aided by random audience participation in the form of Nick, who works in tech, and Dan, who gets all his clothes from Uniqlo. One suspects Nick and Dan may not be who they seem.
Peter and Edward discover a wardrobe that serves as a magic portal to the wintry land of Narnia. Someone is wearing a “Make Narnia Great Again” hat in case we forget where we are. Most pantos pretend to have a moral message; a cynic might say it makes the producers feel virtuous and satisfies the creative form. Here, stepping out of the wardrobe is, metaphorically speaking, the men coming out of the closet and finding pride in being their true selves. The message – we can bring Narnia into a queer future and never step back into the closet – is solid enough, if a little over-egged.
Plot shenanigans see one of the boys kidnapped and locked in a frigid dungeon by the Wicked Bitch (Duern plays her as a frozen-faced, blond, mash-up of Bette Davis and Keira Knightley), aided by Mr Topless (Pieri gets to show off his pecs). The Hungry Beaver (Katie Ball sings wonderfully) turns up, mainly as a tool to introduce more ‘beaver’ jokes than you can shake a dick at (“sweaty”, “exposed”, “a mouthful of”, “hungry”, ad infinitum). Will the kidnapped boy’s beau save him from the clutches of the Wicked Bitch?
Daddy Christmas turns up. “I felt a tingling in my North Pole”, he tells us. “It might be your prostate”, someone retorts. The Wicked Bitch’s minion takes the form of a foul-mouthed porn star called Bonnie Flue. Arse-land The Gape (Katie Ball again), who is the scion of “Adam’s flesh and Steve’s bone”, arrives to save the day, fresh from a Brazilian butt lift in Turkey.
Coley delivers some neat throwaway jokes, though one wishes he and director Sasha Regan had updated last year’s political gags. The digs at Rylan Clark and JK Rowling prove cathartic, though the Epstein joke feels decidedly near the knuckle. Anticipate all the regular panto fare, including call-and-response and competitive audience whooping. The music relies rather too heavily on what is probably Lady Gaga, what might be Beyoncé, and the musical Wicked.
If you want to see adult panto done with West End production values, sublime songs, and guaranteed belly laughs, you are better off choosing The Charing Cross Theatre’s superior Beauty and the Beast. For those who find that venue’s hefty ticket prices hard to take, there is much to enjoy in The Liar, The Bitch and the Wardrobe, even if the whole shebang feels a lot less sophisticated.
Runs until 4 January 2026
