Chris Eldon Lee reviews ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’, which is at Theatre Severn until Sunday 7th of January
“Well, we’ll have to do it again then, won’t we. OOOH!” … as they have been doing now for a dozen years. This is the twelfth time that Evolution Productions have brought Brad Fitt and his fabulous Panto team to Theatre Severn, and the general consensus in the bar afterwards was that this is the best show ever.
Writer Paul Hendy has brilliantly synthesised the old with the new to produce a panto that is deeply traditional, yet freshly current.
Brad Fitt’s Dame Trott promises us all new jokes. And she’s right … but it wouldn’t be the Shrewsbury Pantomime if she didn’t also drag on the battered old wooden panto bench for the children’s favourite “it’s behind you” scene … the chorus of which we now know so well. The fresh twist this time is that the ghosts aren’t entirely dead.
Ever-keen to demonstrate how Panto works, the show opens with a complete empty stage…bare to the black, back wall. It’s up to Fairy Sugarsnap (a glamourous Laura Dene-Perryman) to wave her magic wand to create the colourful village of Chucklemoor. It’s all done in a trice … and the electric pace of the show never slackens. It’s only 5 seconds to the first clap-along number … and 25 seconds to the Rishi Sunak joke.
Brad enters along a pink carpet, wearing the first of his endlessly outrageous frocks. There’s no doubting Dame Trott runs a dairy farm. She even has a blue stripy jug, pouring milk, into a bowl perched on her head. Its corny, of course. And if you‘ve got a cow called Delila, you’ve just have to sing a Tom Jones song; which is even cornier.
The famous barrow routine soon follows … this time it’s a string of 26 increasingly atrocious doggie jokes. And then a real dog appears and almost steals the show. Rita the recalcitrant pup is clearly trained NOT to do the tricks Dame Trott implores her too do … which only gives Brad one option. His getting stuck in the dog’s ‘fun tunnel’ is an absolutely brilliant routine … complete with Queen Mary sound effects.
The Dame has a new techno-toy this year. It’s the ‘Drone of Love’, programmed to search the audience for a new boyfriend. With the aid of a live video screen, she scans the auditorium high and low … and grown men cower.
Later, in what to me was the absolute highlight of the show, she appears in an Elton John costume, complete with tight-fitting, waist-high, Grand Piano no less, and riffs brilliantly on his song titles. Someone should send Elton a ticket. He’d love it.
What makes Evolution Pantos so classy is the creative thinking and imaginative planning that goes into every moment. Not to mention, this time, the mindfulness about stereotypes and the climate crisis.
For example, a great innovation this year is the advent of a terribly camp, public school boy baddie. Lucas Rush brilliantly turns the role inside out to make himself gayly loveable. His character is called Luke Backinanger which, depending on your generation, is either a witty reference to a 1995 Oasis song or John Osbourn’s groundbreaking 1956 play. His posh education sets up one the shows cleverest (if slowest-catching-on) jokes … about the Shrewsbury School Advent Calendar where the parents open the doors for the children.
For once we get the pantomime baddie’s backstory. Embittered in his youth by his failure to get into a boy band, he finally gets his chance in a classic singing routine, with all four male leads taking the mickey out of the likes of ‘Take That’ including ‘right on’ hand gestures.
In the meantime, he’s threatening the world with the giant’s climate destroying ‘Auto-thermo Climatological Weather Machine’. It would be unwise for Dame Trott to climb inside it. But, of course, she does. On the day that Prince Charles at Cop 28 is saying ‘we must save the world’, Dame Trott sets out to do it in just two hours … plus the interval.
We also get a more thoughtful and put-upon giant Blunderdore who is not really evil at all.
The lead characters are buoyantly supported by Jack and Jess (Reece Duncan and Erin Armstrong) who seem to be leading some sort of Scottish invasion, and Tommy J Rollason’s juggling act – with enormous vegetables – has to be seen to be believed. The dancers (including the juniors) are spot on and so is Simon Hanson’s band. You would think there is a complete Symphonie Orchestra down there in the pit.
And finally, I must doff my hat to Michael J Batchelor who has designed all Brad Fitt’s costumes. I’m familiar with the body part called a ‘cauliflower ear’… but his final frock is ridiculous!
Pantomimes are in the habit of saying same thing every year. And so am I. “It’s brilliant, so go and jolly well see it”.