Back in the West End after last year’s Sleeping Beauty Takes a Prick!, He's Behind You brings its fresh take on Jack and the Beanstalk to the Charing Cross Theatre in a celebration of queer pride.
Subtitled What a Whopper!, it’s not surprising that the production’s grand erection at the end of act one is quite a sight to see, and indeed so magical that a ride up through the clouds can endow any male with his very own whopper for a price, bringing much needed cash to the hard-up Trotts.
Writers Jon Bradfield and Martin Hooper know and love the artform of panto, delivering all the anticipated plot points from farmyard setting to selling Tess the cow for magic beans and ensuring good triumphs over evil with a large dollop of romance. But this is a panto for grownups, so in amongst the usual family friendly fare, there’s also plenty of material for those seeking something a little more adult.
In this beanstalk tale, our hero inherits a farm, moving out of Leeds into the Yorkshire countryside with mother in tow. There’s not much hope for a horny rural gay, but when the local vicar catches his eye, some extracurricular activity in the local graveyard results in them both feeling the earth move...
What makes Bradfield and Hooper’s pantomimes so engaging is that they not only cater for their queer, adult audience but also acknowledge the opportunities this affords them as writers. All of their characters go on their own transformative journey and experience the lows as well as the highs of life, from bickering lovers to being victims of landlord discrimination and even confronting the Church on LGBTQIA+ issues. This added layer of lived experience creates more empathy and increases the sense of a shared community between stage and stalls, which is so vital in a genre that thrives on the present and for which the audience is the final member of the cast.
Keanu Adolphus Johnson makes a lovable Jack, trying hard to make ends meet, whilst yearning for something more physical than tending to his little lettuces that keep getting mistaken as apples. When his palm is read by reluctant magic-meddler Fairy Dale, Jack’s destiny is foretold, and only time will tell if Dale’s vision will come true. Returning for a second year and swapping malevolence for benevolence, Chris Lane’s fairy is full of campery, and a long running joke of him working almost every job in the village affords plenty of opportunity to indulge in overacting and innuendo, complete with myriad props and costume.
The beating heart of any panto is of course the Dame, and Matthew Baldwin’s Dame Dolly Trott is the triple-threat queen of ad-libs, put downs and observational jibes. From the moment Dolly douses the audience with her emotional support skunk to encouraging them to reveal the whereabouts of her pesky beaver, this gun-toting, livestock-shooting ex-star of TV soap Over the Hill has the audience where she well and truly wants them, and they all lap it up, gagging for more.
Bradfield and Hooper’s affectionate jesting at soapstars in panto, as well as amateur dramatics as the locals attempt to stage Camelot, allows Jack and the Beanstalk: What a Whopper! to go meta, with the show-within-a-show framework acknowledging the absurdity of the form, none more so than when Fin Walton’s Villager Number 3 is cast as King Arthur, thereby finally receiving a named part. It also allows for some comedic, queer rewrites to Lerner and Loewe’s musical and becomes a helpful mechanism for Joe Grundy’s dishy yet closeted Reverend Tim to confront his feelings for Jack in front of the rest of the village when a scene during rehearsals requires the two to kiss.
Inverting the usual male Comic, Laura Anna-Mead’s Simple Simone provides much comic tomfoolery, particularly with her song that at times looks as though she might never get a chance to sing it in full. As Simone’s wicked aunt Lady Fleshcreep, Jordan Stamatiadis channels aristocratic arrogance and entitlement to a tee. Bent on bulldozing the village to create her new swanky Fleshcreep Farmhouse via any means, Lady Fleshcreep is perhaps most shocked of all when a different whopper with a chopper appears in the show’s glorious conclusion.
Director and choreographer Andrew Beckett and Carole Todd ensure the production zips along at a fine pace, with David Shields’s set transporting the audience from Upper Bottom to inside the Trotts’ humble abode thanks to effective use of rotating scenery. Robert Draper and Sandy Lloyd’s costumes embrace the pantomime aesthetic, updating boots and breeches to hotpants and wellies and helping to usher an air of the recent Disney+ adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s Rivals into proceedings.
A fun-loving panto romp through the Yorkshire dales, Jack in the Beanstalk: What a Whopper! is guaranteed to tickle your fancy and leave you wanting more.