Writer: Philip Meeks
Director: Robbie O’Reilly
Harold Thropp, better known as Twinkle, has seen it all. He’s a pantomime dame who’s worked his way to the top, unlike the majority of Z-list celebrities who make up the rest of the cast at this year’s panto.
Much to his consternation, Twinkle has been relegated to dressing room Five, three floors up and in need of more than a touch of TLC. As he prepares for that evening’s performance, he grumbles and moans about the situation he’s in: playing third fiddle to a cast of talentless nobodies and being overlooked and demeaned because of his age and lack of wider celebrity.
From this bitter starting point, Twinkle takes us through a whistlestop journey through his career and his life. As he unpacks his bags, puts on his makeup and steps into his costume, we delve further back into his life and see that Harold Thropp is far from the brightness and light of the Panto Dame emerging in front of us.
This is a show that is, on the one hand, laugh-out-loud funny but then almost painfully poignant. Meek’s script wonderfully takes us through the process of an actor preparing to step on the stage while simultaneously mirroring that journey backwards through a life richly lived.
Much like Alan Bennet’s Talking Heads series, to which this has more than a passing nod, the script takes us on a deeper, more personal, and more revealing journey than the opening comedy leads you to expect. Set in the theatre dressing room, Robbie O’Reilly’s direction is assured and hugely effective. It could so easily come across as an actorly glory piece, but she has crafted this into a very naturalistic, conversational piece.
Dereck Walker is masterful as Thropp/Twinkle. He delivers the catty backstabbing comic one-liners with relish and then, with a twist of the head or a blink of the eye, takes us to a more vulnerable and emotionally open place. As the make-up and costume go on to hide the physical Thropp, he exposes more and more of the man behind the mask.
Twinkle, frustratingly, is a mere 50 minutes long. But in that time, we’re given more than a glimpse of a life lived – the highs, lows and everything in between – but, in the end, you wish you could spend more time in Twinkle’s company.
Runs until 15 July 2023 and then at Edinburgh Fringe
