I say, aged bean! This sauced-up panto is a suitable handle: VERONICA LEE opinions Jack And The Beanstalk

Jack And The Beanstalk (London Palladium)

Rating: ***** 

Verdict: A triumph of smut and glamour

Because producer/director Michael Harrison brought pantomime again to the Palladium in 2016 just after a a long time-extensive absence, it has swiftly turn out to be a star-laden annual fixture, primarily because of to the megawatt presence of Paul O’Grady and Julian Clary.

Regrettably, O’Grady no for a longer time dons Lily Savage’s frocks. But Clary has developed a form of repertory business with Paul Zerdin, Nigel Havers and Gary Wilmot, who each yr seem to be acquiring as considerably entertaining as the audience.

And so it proves with Jack And The Beanstalk, a triumph of smut and glamour — and which is just Clary, decked out in incredible costumes as different legumes and suggestive vegetables as The Spirit Of The Beans, delivering double entendres from Harrison’s sparkling script. When he arrives on as a runner bean, he avers that he will ‘shoot up versus a wall’.

The script is additional household-friendly than in previous decades, but the grown ups will not be let down at the abundance of good-natured filth

The tale, these types of as it is, is that The Spirit will come to the aid of Jack’s mother, Dame Trot (Dawn French), who has to promote her cow, Pat (Rob Madge), to pay off the giant’s henchwoman Mrs Blunderbore (Alexandra Burke) and then help rescue King Nigel (Nigel Havers) from the giant’s castle.

The political jokes are excellent — Clary 1st enters as an Australian jungle bean, Matteupus Hancockius, which ‘can be fatal for pensioners’, and ‘Boris’ is stated owning impregnated Dame Trot in the interval, he had to leave early as he had a social gathering to go to.

Favorite old gags show up, much too — Clary provides his magic chopper to cut the beanstalk and ship the Big to his grisly destiny.

In a show that echoes the assortment this theatre was after renowned for, Harrison packs a good deal in, which includes panto established-items and a handful of music-and-dance figures involving the large ensemble.

And whilst the display feeds off Clary’s power and his ‘smut tsunami’, the other principals all get their minute, much too. French and Burke have a Strictly dance-off, Gary Wilmot (Queen Nigella) does his ‘list’ track occasion piece — this 12 months ‘I’ve Not Been Well’, about professional medical disorders — even though ventriloquist Zerdin (with puppet Sam) as Foolish Simon shines in his tongue-twister scene. 

The clearly show oozes high-quality — and so it ought to at £150-plus for the most pricey seats — in Mark Walters’ style, Ben Cracknell’s lighting and costumes by Hugh Durrant, and operates at a lick below Harrison’s zippy course

Havers once more will get a beasting from the wonderfully waspish Clary (mainly for a intended bladder issue), but then so does everyone. Even Louis Gaunt and Natalie McQueen as the younger enthusiasts Jack and Jill are mercilessly ribbed for staying musical theatre performers.

The clearly show oozes quality — and so it really should at £150-plus for the most highly-priced seats — in Mark Walters’ layout, Ben Cracknell’s lights and costumes by Hugh Durrant, and operates at a lick underneath Harrison’s zippy way.

The huge beanstalk increasing from the stalls presents a initially-act finale wow instant, even though young children will be suitably impressed by the animatronic large and ogres (by The Twins Fx).

The script is far more loved ones-friendly than in past yrs, but the adults won’t be dissatisfied at the abundance of excellent-natured filth.

Until eventually January 15 (lwtheatres.co.uk)

Yee-ha! it’s a very dolly Xmas for Scrooge

Dolly Parton’s Smoky Mountain Christmas Carol (Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre)

Score:  ***

Verdict: Tennessee twist on a classic

Dolly Parton’s Smoky Mountain Xmas Carol is all the things you’d expect: a vivid and breezy, double D-cup, Country & Western Charles Dickens mash-up.

Or if you want, Dolly’s new musical whacks Robert Bathurst’s Scrooge on the backside with a banjo and places the yee-ha into humbug.

Adjustments have to be built to the story to fit the transatlantic setting — the Melancholy period Appalachian mountains of 1936 Tennessee. So Scrooge gets a rapacious smalltown industrialist, decided on by crooked Marley as a enterprise companion because he ‘makes numbers convey to stories’.

And the ghosts of Christmas Present, Previous and However To Appear are played as a seamstress, a coal miner and a black-clad signify fiddler.

But the show’s best assets are Dolly’s tunes and lyrics (sadly not the star in human being), played on folks instruments which includes banjo, violin, washboard and triple-thwacked double bass.

Our heartstrings are tugged as a great deal as our toes are set tapping by the melancholy strains of Appalachian Snowfall, the wistful nostalgia of younger Scrooge and his lifeless sister’s 3 Wishes, the jaunty Smoky Mountain Xmas, plus the schmaltzy Circle Of Really like. And the climax is a complete-on hoedown, raucously performed on the previous skinflint’s coffin.

Ideal identified for wry and rueful comedy, Bathurst is a positively presidential Ebenezer with a thick moustache settled on his higher lip like an old grey possum.

Moving about the stage with Nixonian gravitas, he stoically observes his lifetime story.

At some point, he wrests a tune of his own from the townsfolk, whimpering meekly: ‘I’ve been transformed, rearranged . . . saved’ (sounding instead sweetly like Kermit the frog in that other A Xmas Carol adaptation).

At 1st a tiny turgid, Alison Pollard’s generation, established primarily in the town’s grocery retailer, grows on you like a bottle of moonshine. Significant-tech it is not.

Squeezed onto the shallow stage of this concert venue like an excitable church choir in the village corridor, it majors on God-lovin’ ambiance somewhat than unique outcomes. And in that department it is in line with Dickens’s Christmas message of hearty superior cheer.

Patrick Marmion