Jack and the Beanstalk

Published Friday 7 December 2007 at 12:25 by Mark Shenton

The fact that panto is being taken seriously again, at last, in central London with both the Old Vic and Barbican both producing their second successive new in-house pantos this year is to be welcomed.

But it’s a pity that an opportunity is being lost by not giving such important showcases for the genre to more experienced hands. Stirring up the ingredients for success - not to mention an inevitable slice of excess - in a large-scale enterprise like this should not be the work of panto neophytes.

While the likes of Berwick Kaler at York, Kenneth Alan Taylor at Nottingham and Susie McKenna at Hackney keep turning their annual excursions into local highlights, the Barbican are instead following last year’s panto debuts by writer Mark Ravenhill and director Edward Hall (that was longer on exposition than exhilaration) with another slow trudge through a classic story, this time steered by Jonathan Harvey as writer and Giles Havergal as director, that signally fails to scale the heights that its title character does.

Some lessons have been learnt from last year - instead of Roger Lloyd Pack who was somewhat sour and uncomfortable as a debuting Dame, this year the proceedings are marshalled by Scottish panto favourite Andy Gray as Dame Dolly Deluxe, who luxuriates in his utter command of the stage. And rather than the potpourri of different composers who included Stiles and Drewe last year, the entire score has been entrusted now to this pair who, more than any other British team now writing, know how to turn out a tune with instant appeal for the kids that also has emotional resonance. A couple of the duets for the appropriately named Princess Melody (a charming Alison Pargeter) and her suitor Jack (Helen Baker) could come straight out of the score to Wicked.

But while it is set in what the chorus rejoice as being a “bog standard town”, what unfolds there is a bit of a slog. There’s not enough magic or motivation to lift the storytelling beyond the pedestrian. Panto needs to keep fast, fluid and agile, and it is only when Ashley Campbell’s likeable Mad Matty, brother of Jack, marshals the audience in a participatory song sheet number that the audience are finally roused from the torpor that regularly threatens to engulf the turgid action.