Stratford East’s pantos are always a bit quirky and this year’s is no exception. The Theatre Royal’s 2023 offering doesn’t start with a Good Fairy and Demon King, Writing her first panto, Anna Jordan pitches straight in with a political demo as the people of Splatford parade placards in protest at the way Giant Belch appropriates so much of the mud from the mine they rely on for economic survival.
Though there are moans about raised rents, this doesn’t have the local or topical political reference that often gives Stratford’s panto bite, but Theatre Royal regular Robert Hyman provides tunes and co-writes lyrics that are as lively as ever.
Our Jack is a bit late for the demo and a bit slow on the uptake too when his mum Linda Lactacious (you can call her Milky Linda) sends him off to sell their cow, Winnie the Moo, who is also his best friend. They need the money, her milk business is in trouble, as she puts it, “the bottom is falling out of dairy.” Jack parts with Winnie not for cash but for ”magic” beans. Well, you know the story. Belch may have a voice that rumbles with thunder but he isn’t the real villain; that’s his henchwoman, Flesh Creep, who, disguised as a shepherd, cheats Jack. It is she who hikes up the rents to fill her own pocket. Splatford mud is good for the skin; Belch just wants to improve his looks.
It is Savanna Jeffrey’s Winnie who establishes a link with the audience and gets a call and response going. They don’t need any telling to boo Lucy Frederick’s Flesh Creep, a baddie who can fly up to the Giant’s place in Cloudland on her black wings, and bullies her son, Junior (Billy Lynch), into joining in her wickedness, though he is really a good guy.
As Jack, it takes Nikhil Singh Rai some time to project much charisma, but then the whole point is that he is an ordinary boy like those in the audience, and once he volunteers to bravely climb up to Cloudland, he wins everyone over.
Nathan Kiley’s Linda gives the show great vitality, especially with her feminine flirt with the audience. She is more drag queen than butch in a dress, but her dresses champion reuse, layered with recycled milk bottles or coffee cups. Lily Arnold’s sets and costumes don’t waste budget on fripperies but deliver bold colourful statements.
Denzel Westley-Sanderson’s direction welds the cast into a strong company in a show that could have done with more of André Fabian Francis’s choreography but finds room to fit in Darth Vader and the Joker, and if you wonder why after climbing the beanstalk Jack seems to have learned how to fly, that and the creatures around him are an hallucination, but the fun going on isn’t.
Something went wrong on press night delaying the show by half an hour; strangely for what is one of London’s most welcoming theatres without explanation or apology. Not a good start, especially when you have so many young children in the audience, and just before the interval, the show had too halt for a technical problem, but it is a credit to the cast that they got the audience straight back into the swing of things. It may have made bedtime a little late, but everyone had a good night out.
This child-friendly panto isn’t the very best that Stratford East has ever produced; nevertheless, it delivers.