Pitched somewhere between a pantomime, a Footlights revue and an old-school variety show, this year's free Family Prom barely qualified for its Prom status, save for 10 judiciously chosen classical excerpts that were crowbarred in between the skits. Not that it mattered: the queue for returns snaked several hundred yards out of the Albert Hall, suggesting that this show could probably have filled Wembley Stadium.
Despite being aimed at children, Horrible Histories won a grown-up British Comedy award for best sketch show, testament to how its Pythonesque absurdism appeals as much to in-the-know parents as to their kids. A 5,000-strong crowd cheered as the Grim Reaper pranced around stage, brandishing a glittery scythe and making jokes about an obscure French composer's death. Thousands of screaming children corrected Henry VIII on his marital history and gleefully joined in Play Your Cards Right as they tried to guess how many people he'd had executed. And the feudal system was succinctly illustrated in a parody of the classic Cleese/Corbett/Barker sketch from The Frost Report, a routine even older than most of the parents here.
Rattus Rattus – the Basil Brush-style talking rat who narrates the show – described it as "a Royal Variety Performance performed by royals". It is not clear how much Richie Webb's songs (with enjoyably daft lyrics by the likes of Terry Deary and Dave Cohen) benefited from lavish orchestral arrangements: with Cleopatra's Lady Gaga-inspired theme, or Charles II's swaggering Eminem pastiche, the strings were unnecessary, even intrusive. The orchestral bombast made more sense when Georges I, II, III and IV formed a boyband to perform an ersatz Westlife number ("I was the sad one/ I was the bad one/ I was the mad one/ I was the fat one"), or when a Spinal Tap-style Viking quartet invaded the stage to lead a lighters-in-the-air power ballad.
A Horrible Histories theatre tour is doing the rounds, though be warned: it is based on Deary's mildly amusing original books, not the side-splitting TV series. This Prom suggests there would be more mileage in adapting the latter for an arena tour.
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