The Southgate theatre’s Christmas production of Pan delivers on everything audiences love about its shows, writes James Cracknell

When Chickenshed was deciding which Christmas production to choose this year, its 50^th anniversary, the Southgate theatre reached out to its own community to ask for their input.

The classic tale Peter Pan was chosen to reflect the charity’s “mission to inspire childlike wonder and imagination”. Previous Chickenshed productions of the JM Barrie story have been among the most loved of its half-century to date, so it seemed a logical choice.

The 2024 version, Pan, sees the titular character enjoying his eternal childhood accompanied by Wendy, Tinkerbell and the Lost Boys, before the inevitable confrontation with Hook and his pirates in Neverland – stalked, as ever, by a ticking crocodile.

Louise Perry, Chickenshed’s managing director, says Pan “is decorated with the fingerprints of hundreds of cast members from previous decades”.

The theatre’s legendary Christmas productions typically operate with rotating casts of a total 600 performers, but this year they’ve gone even further with five casts that see a whopping 800 people – mostly children – take to the stage in total.

Inclusivity makes Chickenshed stand out and it’s always a joy to see every song and scene signed for the hard-of-hearing in the audience, while children with learning and physical disabilities take the stage for the big set pieces – clearly loving every single moment.

In the performance I see, Jonny Morton plays a menacing but humorous Hook, Demar Lambert is superb as Peter Pan, and Ellie Morton is hilarious as the squeeky-voiced Tinkerbell. Demar spends most of his time suspended above the stage, flawlessly flying and somersaulting through the air while delivering his lines with a smile – I presume he has no issue with heights!

While there are no boundary-pushing interpretations to be found in this production – such as transplanting Jack and the Beanstalk into a video game (2022), or creating an AI robot version of Pinocchio (2023) – Pan delivers in every way that we’ve come to expect from a Chickenshed show, capping off the theatre’s 50^th anniversary year in celebratory style.

Pan is showing until 11^th January. To buy tickets:
Visit chickenshed.org.uk/events/pan

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