Daft jokes, silly songs, and plenty of audience participation are the order of the day in this rambunctious panto production.
The plot puts a slight twist on the traditional versions of Beauty and the Beast, with Belle (Eloise Cubbin) becoming trapped in the castle of the Beast (Joshua Gould) following a prisoner swap for her trespassing mad-inventor mother.
The castle is under the spell of Grimalkin (Gillian Dean), including residents Buster (Rachel Cummins) and Mrs Sauce Potts (Leighton Melville).
Dean steals the show as the wicked witch, bringing in a classic panto baddie replete with cackles and smart-cracking asides from writer and director Hayley Evenett’s witty script. There’s plenty of humour too from dumb beefcake Bouffant (Callan Durrant), who hankers after Belle – and his undoing is typical of the deft handling bought to some of the more sexist strands in the story.
Cummins and Melville bring plenty of energy to their comic double act, and while the choices of the Ghostbusters theme and Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5 for big song numbers is largely inexplicable, being panto they still make it work.
This is a nicely layered traditional panto, brought up to date: plenty of jokes and gentle innuendo to keep the adults entertained, and stuffed full of silliness to keep the kids happy. Oh yes it is!
Beauty and the Beast continues at the Fisher Theatre, Bungay, until Tuesday 31 December.
