Every Night at the Palladium
By MALCOLNI RUTHERFORD
IT seats 2,500: there are thirteen performances a week; it is the most popu- lar and the best-known theatre in London. A 'You don't have to think,' they say, 'anyone can enjoy it.' And certainly anyone comes. It must be the only theatre—the only place even— where teenagers come with their parents, or where people willingly come alone and enjoy it. It's a place where every joke is shared with the person next to you.
Only once in recent years has the Palladium admitted to a flop. That was the Christmas show last year, The Man in the Moon, starring Charlie Drake. For the Palladium it was a new departure, a musical rather than the traditional pantomime. But despite the publicity no one believed it wasn't a panto till they came. Even then it ran five months to largely full houses, and it wasn't the box office but the audience reaction that per- suaded the management they were on the wrong track. In trying to be up-to-date, the old recipe for success had been thrown away. This year they are reverting to tradition with a panto, co-starring Cliff Richard and Arthur Askey.
Curiously enough, it does not seem to be the
TV show which keeps the Palladium going. Sunday Night at the Palladium might come from anywhere. The building is merely hired out to ATV. There is nothing to show that the Palla- dium is a kind of people's temple between Liberty's and Fifth Avenue, nothing to tell the audience that there is a quite separate show going on there every other night of the week.
In fact, the Palladium keeps going in its own right, with Standards of Production far higher than anything usually achieved on TV. It does so without making any visible attempt to be 'with it.' The present show is almost entirely non- topical. There is only one reference to Sir Alec Douglas-Home--and that non-political--none to Mr. Wilson. When a new pop star makes the grade and reaches the Palladium, he or-she is not allowed to take over the show. At the moment, Miss Cilia Black is attempting every night to knock, the audience out with the pick of the pops; they have been transformed into family favourites. The Fourmost are the first beat group to have appeared there. 'No show nowadays would be complete without the big beat, etc. ...' But the beat is strangely subdued. Like all the other singers, they get the rhythmic hand- clapping, but no stomping. The Palladium has a way of taming artists and at the same time en- larging them. Every act is assimilated.
Startime at the Palladium opened in May for an eight-week run. It was so successful that it is still there, even though this meant turning down an almost certain engagement with the Beatles. It is the familiar variety blend of juggler, comedians, singers, chorus, and the top of the bill, this time Frankie Vaughan. On its own and without production not one of these acts would be really outstanding. The particular talent of Audrey Jeans, who appears in the first half, seems only to be nice. Neither as a singing mimic nor
as a comedienne does she really make it, yet the audience love her. Felix Brunn, who practises four hours a day, is as sensational as jugglers always are, and as with all jugglers his fascina- tion is limited. Part of the secret lies simply in being personally liked by the audience, and liking them. Nothing is offensive and the jokes are scrupulously clean. Any mention of sex is strictly for the family. And the artist who more than anyone makes the show is neither Miss Black nor Mr. Vaughan. It is the comedian Tommy Cooper, the only performer with an act in both halves.
Mr. Cooper is a very large man, a conjuror whose tricks never quite come off. He makes great play with properties, drawing them all from a huge battered holdall. He is a master of timing, but, above all, he has mastered the knack of playing the Palladium, which is simply to laugh yourself until the audience laugh with you. Mr. Cooper laughs with the whole of his body. All the other performers use this technique, none so well. Partly it's a way of getting through the feebler lines, but also of wooing the audience, of making them feel accepted just as they accept the artist. I suspect that a man could go on the Palladium stage and do nothing but laugh. If he modulated this carefully, going from the guffaw back to the embarrassed smile and directed it all towards the audience, they would be with him all the way. And the audience would be right, for it is all a matter of mutual sympathy.
Yet it can't be all formula and technique. Ob- viously there's something more to the Palladium's secret than this. Take the Palladium Girls and Boys. They might have been chosen from any- thing up to 1,500 applicants. None of them can go into a new show without re-auditioning and the ballet-master is said to be out front every performance taking notes. Yet at first sight they hardly seem remarkable. Whether they're form- ing a background of dancers for a song, or are on stage by themselves, they do little that is at all original. Any choreography there is is unexcit- ing. Like the light scenery which drops from the flies, they are noticed only as part of the whole. The effect of their constant changes of dress is largely subliminal.
And this is how it should be. For what is most apparent on a closer look is the fantastic effici- ency with which it is all produced. Nothing, it seems, at the Palladium could go wrong; cer- tainly nothing could ever be seen to go wrong. Nothing, I think, ever will go wrong so long as they can keep to this way of blending the old and new and producing not just a series of acts, but a coherent show. Not only is it the friendliest 'show in London; it must also be the one with the most hard work behind it.
wouldn't mind an election every dot'
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