‘Cinderella Panto’ at People’s Light

Watch out, cross-dressing celebrities (e.g., Nathan Lane of Bird Cage, Bertie Carvel of Matilda, Taylor Mac of The Last Two People on Earth, Billy Porter of Kinky Boots). Mark Lazar has entered the drag race, and he’s serious competition.

People’s Light has cornered a niche market with its annual Panto production, now in its tenth season. It’s a hybrid genre— rooted historically in English villages, where local players devised holiday shows based on well-known fairy tales but spiced with cross-dressing and audience participation. The genre has morphed into a contemporary variety show, of sorts: a mash-up of story-telling, English music hall routine, vaudeville, song-and-dance, stand-up comedy and improvisation, all laced with contemporary and local references.

Silent film, too

Kathryn Petersen (who wrote the book) and Michael Ogborn (music and lyrics) have made delightful (if not outrageous) theatrical hay of the genre. They’ve set their Cinderella in “Malvernistan” in the roaring 1920s, where their damsel-in-distress is being tortured by an evil stepmother and two stepsisters. But their hapless heroine boasts several assets that previous ones lacked, including a doting father and four consorts from the animal kingdom (a tomcat, a squirrel, a rat and a flea) who narrate the story while watching Cinderella’s back. Somehow, Cinderella makes it to the ball (with a tour de force costume change), where she meets not one but two Prince Charmings. Oh, and she forgets to leave one of her glass slippers behind, causing another complication.

The plot is utter nonsense, and of course that’s the fun of it. I mean, where else can you embellish a classical tale with references to the Paoli Local, Ted Cruz’s government shutdown, The Elephant Man and Obamacare? Where else can you compose a scintillating original score (for piano and percussion) that also includes the Philadelphia Eagles motif, the theme song of 2001, the opening bars of “Law and Order,” the theme music from Jaws, and “Turkey in the Straw”?

The result is a marvelous mishmash of holiday merriment, served up by a seamless ensemble of talented performers (including Tom Teti, Susan McKey, Chris Mullen, Kim Carson and Jeffrey Coon, many of whom are Panto regulars). Director Pete Pryor (of the past five Pantos) brilliantly orchestrates this comedic mayhem with polish, flair and virtuosity. He’s got everything going on, from song-and-dance capers to the unexpected bonus of a silent film (featuring the two Prince Charmings). His actors run through the house, sit in spectators’ laps, enlist them to cheer and jeer, shower them with sweets, and— of course— coax them onstage.

Grand entrances

But the jewel in the production’s crown is Mark Lazar as Hazel Opfinder, Cinderella’s deceased mother, who makes three spectacular show-stopping entrances, thanks to Lazar’s humongous size and Rosemarie McKelvey’s costume design.

In his first appearance, Lazar bursts out of an upright coffin as a kind of gargantuan fairy godmother, poured into a tight-fitting pink-sequined hourglass dress with purple boa and feathered hat. His/her second costume— this time disguised as a “Hazel tree” in green and gold— is equally outrageous, down to the detail of false eyelashes and bird nest hat. His final “Hazel, the bluebird of happiness” costume” (blue satin and feathers) trumps the previous two, if only for its “Can-you-top-this” audacity.

As a critic who has marveled at the epidemic of cross-dressing in the current theater season, I thought I’d interview an audience member of the younger generation (my nine-year-old grandson) about the phenomenon.

Question: “Why do people laugh when a man dresses up like a woman on stage?”

Gabriel: “They shouldn’t. In Shakespeare’s time, men always played women.” (Disclosure: Gabriel has acted in Midsummer Night’s Dream, so he knows his stuff).

Question: “So if there’s equality in the theater today, then why do directors still hire men to play women?”

Gabriel: “It’s entertainment. That’s what we’re paying for, isn’t it?”