easthampshire.org

Review: Jack and the Beanstalk, Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Dear Santa,

For Christmas this year I would like:

Something sparkly
Something delicious
Some top tunes
Something naughty and nice

I promise I have been a very good girl (apart from that incident with the cheesecake and that really wasn’t my fault).

Lots of love,

Tophat

Hurrah! It’s the time of year when we embrace the spirit of the season with traditional rituals as comforting and warm as a favourite pair of fluffy bedsocks. Carols, mulled wine, last minute shopping sprees, and of course…. panto!

The Yvonne Arnaud’s production of Jack and the Beanstalk’ provides all the ingredients for a tasty festive treat – glitter and glam, thigh slapping, evil villains, cute kids, dreadful puns and a pair of bloomers the size of the Albert Hall. It’s everything that should be on your Christmas List.

Hero Jack is tricked into selling his cow for a handful of magic beans, but still manages to overcome the terrifying Giant terrorising his village, winning the hand of a princess in the process.

The quartet at the core of the show are ‘regulars’ Royce Mills, Lloyd Hollett, Peter Gordon and Gerry Tebbutt.

Gerry Tebbutt’s script rattles along at a great pace, giving Lloyd Hollett’s Simple Simon plenty of groanworthy material to get his teeth into. Hollett also manages to keep the grownups on their toes with some outrageous double entendres, which luckily the kids are too busy shouting ‘It’s behind you!’ to spot.

Peter Gordon (whose day job is breakfeast present on local radio station The Eagle) is gloriously hammy as King Kuthbert.

Royce as the dame is the highlight of the show for me. His comic timing is superb, his costumes increasingly hilarious, and somehow he brings a touching vulnerability to the role.

My 5 year old on the other had developed a little bit of a crush on the local legend Bonnie Langford as Fairy Fuchsia. She showed why she has had such a long running career in showbiz with impressive high kicks and stage presence.

Her counterpart, Kit Hesketh-Harvey as Dastardly Dick, clearly relishes his villainous role – an upper class rotter worthy of Terry Thomas – and the audience love him for it, enthusiastically booing and hissing.

The joy of panto is its unpredictable nature – the standout moments are where it can and does go a bit off script. Like when the marvellous Clarabel the pantomime cow comes a bit of a cropper and her hind legs nearly do the splits, just after Simple Simon sticks his head up inside the costume and hollers ‘Mum! Clarabel’s swallowed two blokes!’

There’s plenty of slapstick too, particularly the genuinely funny ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’. You know it’s going to get messy when they line the stage with waterproof covering before the song starts! Dastardly Dick is covered with custard pies, wellies, mops and toilet rolls are thrown around the stage, and Simple Simon and King Kuthbert get increasingly out of breath (at one point wheezingingly reminding an hysterical audience they have to do this sketch three times on Saturdays).

I was promised I would be impressed by the Giant – and indeed I was. I won’t spoil it for those going to see the show but I will say he is HUGE!

The cast are great, the kids in the chorus adorable, the music and dancing exuberant, the sets fantastic – in short, this panto is a Christmas Cracker – it goes off with a bang, is filled with terrible jokes, and is best when shared.

easthampshire.org group:

• Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Reviewed by: tophat

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