ACT Reviews 2022-2023 Season

JACK AND THE BEANSTALK (The Pantomime) Written and directed by Jack Forrest PADOS Theatre Group

As the line goes “…’Tis the season to be jolly…” and that is exactly how I felt when leaving the theatre after watching this superb pantomime. Although this tale of ‘Jack and his Beanstalk’ is a staple of the pantomime season, this work had been written by the director. The skeleton for the story was all there with the good fairy, the evil characters, a dame, a giant, a beanstalk, a love interest, and, of course, our hero, Jack.

It can be tempting when writing your own version of a traditional pantomime to alter some of the content other than the names of characters but this one contained everything that we would expect of panto. The writer, Jack Forrest, has years of experience on stage delivering pantomime and this shone through in the writing. He knew exactly the structure and sequence that the scenes should take. He made sure that there was ample dialogue and gags for the characters to engage with the audience and build a rapport. The inclusion of traditional slap stick kitchen and ghost scenes had the people, young and old alike, shouting out and laughing heartily. The song sheet of the ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’, with words on side screens, was an absolute hoot with the mayhem of articles being thrown into the audience. Of course, a script can appear very funny in a writer’s mind but it also needs actors to lift those words from the page and create something special, and here PADOS had put together an exceptional cast to accomplish this. Every pantomime has the good fairy character and Fiona Stewart delivered her dialogue clearly and in rhyme. The stance on stage was very dancer like, which became endearing and point of imitation for the rest of the cast, though I am not sure she realised they were taking the mickey, but all this was done in good spirit.