Jack and the Beanstalk evaluation – sass, sparkle and fee-fi-fo enjoyable sock it to the baddies | Theatre

This isn’t your bog-standard Jack and the Beanstalk. In Sonia Jalaly’s model, the story has been picked up and dropped into a faculty in Hammersmith, run by the meat-loving monster Fleshcreep (John Partridge, who wears a salami-printed swimsuit). There’s no big both; only a colossus laptop system hidden within the sky, constructed to wipe kids’s brains of all their creativeness.

It’s all good enjoyable and video games, however at occasions you lengthy for slightly familiarity. Still, with the really great Fairy Godfather (Jade Hackett) on the entrance and centre of this manufacturing, it might take an actual Scrooge to not be taken in by all of the festivity. Hackett combines wizardry with knowledge to serve up some of the commanding turns I’ve ever seen on a panto stage.

Directed by Nicholai La Barrie, the manufacturing fizzes with cheery spark. There’s a fiery love story between Momma Trott and the Fairy Godfather; they’re drawn collectively like magnets each time they lock eyes on stage. What’s not listed below are the political jokes which have characterised Lyric pantos of years passed by. Apart from a single reference to the Coldplay CCTV dishonest saga (very effectively executed), it doesn’t really feel notably topical both.

So, La Barrie leans totally into the flicker of all of it. The pop hits come thick and quick, with choreography by Kayla Lomas-Kirton sending the stage right into a disco ball frenzy. Jack, performed by Joey James, is a nervous little factor and hides behind a sock puppet (used to various levels of success) that sits on his arm. His sister Jill (a brilliantly sassy Sienna Widd) has a no-nonsense angle and refuses to be intimidated by evil Fleshcreep’s threats. When her mum and brother lastly enter the enormous’s kingdom after climbing a beanstalk fabricated from socks to rescue her, she is completely unfazed by the entire thing.

Sam Harrison’s dame won’t have the aptitude of others who’ve gone earlier than her. But, with Partridge on the helm, it is a correctly sinister Christmas hit. Even the viewers concern him – correct fee-fi-fo enjoyable.