Jack And The Beanstalk

Jack And The Beanstalk

Byre Theatre, St Andrews

Mary Brennan

This time last year, it looked as if The Byre had left the pantosphere because of uncertainties over the venue's own future, so it wasn't until the last minute that Glasgow's Bard in the Botanics team, headed up by writer/director Gordon Barr, could say for sure that Jack And The Beanstalk would sprout on-stage for Christmas.

Like Dame Nellie Numpty herself, it's a valiant but somewhat cash-strapped affair. Once Jack (Robert Elkin) has started to ascend the beanstalk of the title... well, after the interval, he's come down to earth again and Barr has had to concoct a second half without a Giant stramash.

He's taken, instead, to problems with Christmas Spirit - it's low-to-non-existent in poverty-stricken Fantasia and even when Jack has stolen Count Olaf's money-bags, it doesn't revive. We've edged into Mother Goose morality tales here, boys and girls.

There'll be a hint of Wizard of Oz before we're done - though at over two and a half hours long, the action heads into the long grass in search of the plot. Gosh. It finds pastiche, and flashes back to 70s disco fever when lurve was in the air for Olaf and Nellie.

This would all be a hip sway too far if it wasn't for a tremendous, hard working bunch of professionals and local kids. Tom Duncan's evil accented Olaf is a suavely witty villain, Alan Steele's Dame Numpty is an incongruous coquette with five o'clock shadows in her voice, huge fun, breezily supported through much singing and dancing by a cast who jingle merrily all the way to the singalong cloot.

Aladdin

MacRobert Centre, Stirling

Mary Brennan

There are some words that act like magic in the pantosphere: abracadabra, Open Sesame and Disco. In Stirling Stella - that region of the pantosphere that embraces the MacRobert - the 70s flares, the platform boots, the sequins and the John Travolta dance moves are all to the fore in a version of Aladdin that side-steps the traditional setting of old Peking in favour of a nostalgically camp groove where glitter-balls, big bad hair and remarkably ugly clothes are all jokes in themselves. It's all a bit too naff to be visually charming, and the Dame's penchant for hit and miss scanties - albeit securely anchored to the chubbette body suit that encases Andy Clark's Twankey - is verging on the off-putting, even if Clark acts as if he's in better, funnier gear.

He is, of course, in a script by Johnny McKnight that gives everyone on-stage a head start in the hilarity stakes. There's no shortage of banter and snash, some of it spattered with sauce but most of it as kid-friendly clean as the comedy business in Marge O'Reen Twankey's laundry. Yes, there is the longest ever on-stage snog in the pantosphere when Aladdin and Prince Jasper surrender to the ring-a-ting-ching-etc of true love. Despite the name, Aladdin is the adorably chipper Dawn Sievewright while Martin McCormick is her Prince, a spangled nod to the OTT dress sense of glam-rock who's a hoot even without opening his mouth. As ever, at the MacBob, the local youngsters are out in all-singing all-dancing force, adding oomph under the direction of Julie Brown who has an evil side as the sorceress Lilith - she gets lamped in the end, in a panto that isn't quite cooking on gas mark eight, yet.