© Eoin Carey 2022

The Guardian 27 November 2022

Holywood repeats itself, first as musical, second as panto. If you have never imagined Dorothy in drag, well, you have never reckoned on Johnny McKnight, the spangly gold standard of pantomime dames, swapping denim for gingham and following the yellow brick road out of Tronsis. It stretches only as far as the West End of Glasgow but packs in a dust-storm of diversions en route.

Somehow the writer, director and star takes one of cinema’s most sensitive tales and makes it raucous, irreverent and very, very funny. And he does so without mocking the original. In fact the movie is about the only thing that doesn’t get mocked in a show packed with put-downs of everything from rival Christmas shows to Alan Cumming in Burn, not forgetting the dazzling cast themselves. [READ MORE]

By Mark Fisher

MARK FISHER is a freelance theatre critic and feature writer based in Edinburgh and has written about theatre in Scotland since the late-1980s. He is a theatre critic for The Guardian, a former editor of The List magazine and a frequent contributor to the Scotsman and other publications. He is the co-editor of the play anthology Made in Scotland (1995), and the author of The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide (2012) and How to Write About Theatre (2015) – all Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. He is also the editor of The XTC Bumper Book of Fun for Boys and Girls and What Do You Call That Noise? An XTC Discovery Book (both Mark Fisher Ltd).