“I haven’t seen these since . . . I’ve never seen these before,” says Dame Sally Trotts (Callum Wardman-Browne) about a bag of magic beans in the latest St Andrews Charity Pantomime, Jack and the Very Tall Beanstalk. I related to this because I was also seeing something for the first time—that tradition sadly never exported to my part of the world, the noble pantomime. I felt under-qualified going into the show, so for some cultural education I prevailed upon (other) Erin. She told me that a central tenet of panto humour is “crossdressing is funny.” Many such cases.
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| ID: Charlie Macbeth. Credit: Matthew Colquhoun. |
Fortunately for the viewers of this panto, which was written and directed by Buster Ratcliffe van der Geest, the humour is more inventive than just that—broad, yes, outrageous as is only right, but often sly and surprising. Callum plays the formidable matriarch of the Trotts family, selling jokes about Brexit and screenagers with a mixture of earnestness and incredulity. As I have been told is customary, his face looks like it’s been smashed in flour and then finger-painted, and he has acquired a sizeable bust. Less impressive are the pair that Sam Morrison has grown as Fairy Christmas. He wears wings most elegant, but walks around the stage in boots that sound like one million oncoming horses. Though F.C. seems exasperated by how little she has to do until the end of the show, Sam does a lot with her. Her antithesis in footwear is Jack (a winning Sophie-Rose Jenkins), mysteriously in ballet slippers. I’d be remiss here not to mention the other Jack, the stage manager (Aubrey McCance) dragged onstage to replace Sophie-Rose after she’s briefly knocked out. Seemingly unprepared to be Jack, Aubrey instead attempts recitations from his past dramatic roles, including as Macbeth. Wherefore art thou, Shakespeare? Doesn’t he realise he’s in something better than Shakespeare?
Among Kate Nolting’s costumes, I especially enjoyed the lederhosen worn by the E-Jets (Iha Jha and Ava Daniels), easily swindled tax collectors, and the kind of horrible necklace of rubber-glove udders on the Trotts’ cow. Ellen Rowlett plays the front half of the cow, raising the collective aura of the room with her nonchalant “moo.” Charlie Macbeth, entering as the Beanstalk (he also plays the Giant), issues an equally compelling utterance: “beans.” Literally true. He could have a future in interpretive dance—it seems like some passion may have been unlocked in his eloquent, weirdly sultry beanstalk-sprouting scene. The true king of innuendo, though, is Cameron Collier as the Mysterious Man, who describes “eight hours of unprotected . . . sleep” and brags about denying fair maidens child support. A shattering third-act twist reveals that Dame Sally was one of these maidens, and the Mysterious Man is father to Jack, Jill (Bella Yow, pragmatic when not swooning over Jack), and Billy (Dylan Swain, generous with the physical comedy). In a blatant act of copyright infringement, the Mysterious Man left Sally for a certain Italian plumber, also portrayed by Aubrey. Queer love stories are certainly welcomed here, even when there’s a big question mark floating over your head about them.
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| ID: Sophie-Rose Jenkins and Cameron Collier. Credit: Matthew Colquhoun |