'Jack and the Beanstalk' Review
"It ticks all the traditional panto boxes, and so much more"
Venue: The Lyric, Hammersmith. Get directions.
Our verdict:
This year’s utterly brilliant panto offering at The Lyric Hammersmith is the familiar story of Jack and The Beanstalk, overhauled for 2023 with themes of social inequality and a heart-warming reminder of the efficacy and importance of the common good.
Thanks to a tyrannical taxman, Jack still must sell his beloved cow, Daisy, to save the family business (‘Dame Trott’s World of Milk’), and there are indeed the compulsory enchanted beans, but really these aren’t required as director Nicholai La Barrie’s smashing panto is magic enough.
The design team – known as Good Teeth - have excelled themselves.
The ingeniously OTT costumes and eye-popping sets are an imaginative and sensationally sparkling delight throughout – the milking parlour machine is particularly memorable, as is Dame Trott’s entire wardrobe…
The company, without exception, are all excellent. Leah St Luce is a triumph as the story’s modern-day heroine – her incredibly likeable, activist-esque Jack is bold, funny, and ready to fight for Hammersmith’s rights. Forget the usual cheesy panto stuff, St Luce is cool and charismatic, with smooth moves that had everyone dancing in their seats.
Jodie Jacobs is brilliant as the evil and compellingly weird ‘Fleshcreep’, who lives in the sky and charges the good people of West London extortionate taxes whilst picking off their livestock using a giant mechanical ogre arm - a bit like an oversized grabber from an arcade game.
From her sulky threats to leave for the Hackney Empire (perhaps in her wonderfully tiny villain-mobile) to reprimanding the band for not giving her the right comedy cues, Jacobs is hilarious and plays the baddie with enthralling gusto, not to mention her lusty affections for a certain old flame…
Maddison Bulleyment, with their sensational singing ability and touching rendition of Billie Eilish’s ‘Happier Than Ever’ (one of the show's highlights), gives this panto its perfectly pitched sentimentality. They are wonderful as Jill – Jack’s best friend and trainee fairy godparent who desperately wants equality for all.
Jack’s hapless, endearing brother, Simon, is another terrific performance, this time by Finlay McGuigan, whose impressive stage entrances and energetic magic show moments break up all the action brilliantly.
But when Emmanuel Akwafo - aka Dame Trott – struts onto the stage for the very first time, belting out ‘Run the World (Girls)’ by Beyoncé through glittering lips and dressed like a giant milkshake, well, I thought that the roof of the Lyric might actually blow off.
By the end of the show, I suspect that the whole auditorium - myself included - would have happily signed up as fully paid members of the Akwafo fan club. He is a saucy, sassy and completely captivating Dame Trott. His duet with Daisy (the cow) – a version of Titanic’s ‘I Will Always Love Moo’, of course, still makes me laugh now, days later.
The plot isn't really a priority here, but that doesn’t matter one bit - Jude Christian and Sonia Jalaly’s script is full of wit and warmth and there are gags galore, although it’s considerably lighter on the political guffaws than previous years (minus one Liz Truss lettuce reference…), which is actually something of a relief.
The show ticks all the traditional panto boxes (‘it’s behind you’ and the now iconic ‘Glory, glory Hammersmith’, etc) before speeding off into the realms of cool, clever and carefully considered, elevating this production from a bit of festive fun to a completely brilliant evening.
My ONLY sadness is that Daisy and the brilliant golden-egg-laying goose didn’t get their time to shine during the curtain call, but perhaps they needed a lie down after the 2 hours and 20 minutes of complete and utter non-stop high-octane JOY.
Panto is all about glitter-filled escapism, and my goodness the Lyric’s all-singing, all-dancing sparkle fest provides just that, and so much more.
Until Saturday 07 January 2023. Tickets from £10, ages 6+
Lyric Hammersmith
Lyric Square, King Street, City of London, W6 0QL
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