Pantos have so much crossover with queer performance, it always feels odd that most mainstream productions act straight. London’s biggest queer panto Jack and the Beanstalk: What a Whopper! helps redress this imbalance, with enough dick jokes to butt you into the new year. Created by the team behind the previous pantos at the now sadly shuttered LGBTQ+ venue Above the Stag and now in its second year at the Charing Cross Theatre, this gay adult affair has a stellar dame, but the energetic cast are restrained – not in a sexy way – by a disappointingly droopy script.
Writers Jon Bradfield and Martin Hooper – who wrote the ATS pantos for over a decade – thrust us into the rolling hills of Upper Bottom in the Yorkshire Dales. Under the cock-like clouds of David Shields’s glittering set, our randy protagonist Jack (Keanu Adolphis Johnson) is attempting to make it as a farmer in his wellies and tiny thigh-busting denim shorts. In swoops closeted Reverend Tim (Joe Grundy) for a quick fumble in the graveyard (‘Forgive me father’, they sing between the headstones, ‘for I have rimmed’). As light sexual shenanigans ensue and a cute cow (who sweetly gets her own bio in the programme) is swapped for a handful of magic beans, textbook evil villain Lady Fleshcreep (a swaggering Jordan Stamatiadis) stomps around town, trying to ruin Jack’s fortunes and steal everyone’s land.
All pantos work to a formula, but the best carve out their own identity. Beyond finding a hundred words for arsehole, this production sorely lacks originality, with limited physical comedy, muddled calls and responses, and too many jokes relying on low hanging phallic fruit. Everyone loves a crude cock gag, but after a while the humour longs for extra embellishment.
Most of these flaws can be forgiven for the sparkling Dame Dolly Trott (Matthew Baldwin), Jack’s mum and Above the Stag regular. The surprisingly traditional show is held together by her quick, sardonic wit, her creative costumes (designed by Robert Draper and Sandy Lloyd) and preening smugness at making her quick-ish changes. Daft local fairy Dale (Chris Lane) is excellent too, popping up as bit parts across town, but he would shine with more to do than lurk fabulously.
This a decent option if you’re after a panto where the audience isn’t invited to laugh at the idea of a man in a dress and where fairytale endings don’t have to be so straight-laced. But with strong production values, a vibrant cast and an audience up for a good time, it could be so much more.
