Magic is missing T EN YEAR OLD M ichael rocked in his

seat. Jimmy Edwards' antics with cornet and trombone had him in stitches. During the Frankie VaughanJoan Regan love-songs he shifted about, looking at the man controlling the lights and wondering about getting an ice
cream in the interval.
Puss in Boots (Palladium) is the mixum-gatherum that pantomime has degenerated into. It is good of its kind. Jimmy Edwards carries the show with plenty of slapstick for the youngsters and sly vulgarities for the oldsters. Mike and Bernie Winters provide a good support while Frankie Vaughan sends the in-betweens from 15 to 50 into gales of ecstasy.
The production is lavish. The transformation scenes are minor miracles of stage production, the best being the Kool Kat Club where Puss in Boots (excellently played in his best off-hand style by Dick Emery) wins an extra life after his master, Frankie Vaughan, gets in the groove with the Hep Cat herself. Dr. Algebra's subterranean laboratory. with its transmogrifiers and disintegrators. is suitably impressive for the computer-age youth.
But it all adds up to nothing. For an older generation, it is three hours and a bit of passing the time; for the younger ones, there is nothing of the memorable magic of the pantos of three decades ago. They have robbed us of the mystery and given us cynicism. Or is it just that we have grown up and that for a ten-year-old the magic and the mystery remain ? D.F.
* *
SMASHING! It was very funny. I specially liked the part where Toad in Toad of Toad Hall (Comedy Theatre) kept going round like a car, that was just after he had fallen asleep. You saw all sorts of places (scenery) the prison, the courtroom and there was a jolly funny judge, he couldn't stop laughing at Toad who climbed on the box. Toad was sent to prison for five months for bad driving, another six for something else and three months for calling the policeman "fat face". He went to prison for a year Toad was in the wood, in the underground passage and the badger's house. The party at Toad Hall was jolly good -they all hit the wrong host on the head with a hammer-it was really funny ! P.LH (aged 7). CINDY-ELLA (Garrick Theatre) is a musical which will entertain teenagers who like pop music. It is full of cheer and light fun.