The Producers of Jack and the BeanstalkĀ at the Hilton Brighton Metropole, promise a Giant Family Pantomime and a Magical Christmas Fayre, which include excellent childrenās dodgems, and non – festive food stalls.
HOWEVER, the pantomime itself is, indeed, a traditional family panto with the best Giant I have seen for a long while. A great prop operated very skilfully by one of the boy dancers, I expect.
Other highlights were the bold and colourful projections (Danilo Raino), the vocal talents especially Fairy Nature (Keris Lea who also wrote the panto) and the strong, experienced performances of David Rumelle as Dame Trott and the charismatic Alasdair Buchanan as ( a rather under-used) Fleshcreep.
Jodie Michele provided lots of traditional, panto choreography with the best boy dancers Iāve seen for a while in a ālocalā panto. There were rather a lot of songs but well sung by Molly Scott, Shaun Mendum and Richard Dawes and the appropriate amount of local and topical gags which went over the head of the rather young audience but mostly landed with the adults.
The narrative got a bit lost in Act 2 with the drama of escaping the Giant and cutting down the Beanstalk omitted but the audience didnāt care and were up on their feet singing and dancing along to this years āmust haveā song sheet – Baby Shark!
First night sound problems will be sorted by tomorrow I am sure and I expect the lighting department will be adding the two followspots to all the dialogue as there is not much front of house lighting and the comics cannot be seen ( therefore, not heard,) against the powerful projections without the followspots.
All in all though, huge congratulations to David Hill and Lukasz Wojcik for not only taking on this giant enterprise with an audience of 10,000 already booked but also doing so much good in the community by involving and supporting many charities including the Sussex Beacon. Well done to all.
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