Pantomime

Beauty and the Beast

Paisley Arts Centre

Mary Brennan

FOUR STARS

You know that disbelief hasn't just been suspended, but has left the building altogether when wee boys are cheering the Beast to snog Bonnie. If, by any chance, the flamboyantly villainous Ratman (a melodramatically mustachio'd Tommy Hart) was squirming out of his come-uppance, those same wee boys - and hordes of equally impassioned wee girls - would rush the stage and put his gas on a peep themselves. Given the easy accessibility of the Paisley Arts Centre stage, such panto justice would be done with gusto, just as the piling on for a final song and dance empties the seating bank of all but the adults who have to act their age, not their shoe size.

For the 27th year in succession, David Wallace - writer, director and un-jaded, game Dame - heads up a production that outclasses many a more lavishly-funded show in terms of daft antics, slick patter and genuine (often improvised!) engagement with the audience. The story-line, too, has its own inventive twists: the Beast, a usurped Prince, lives in the sewers where he looks after the children Ratman has banished there - the youngsters of PACE's Team One are wonderfully Dickensian waifs, as well as townsfolk and evil henchman. While Wallace and his accomplice in mayhem, Alan Orr, keep the panto elements firing on all cylinders, Danny Holmes (Beast) and Karen Fishwick (Bonnie) provide the love interest in a tremendous strand of music theatre that has hints of Phantom of the Opera in its gloomy, underground setting but a stirring score of its own. As village square unfolds into dank sewer, on a stage the size of sixpence, disbelief morphs into amazement - magic!