6 December – 4 January
In searching around for words that sum up the Hippodrome’s Christmas offering this year, ‘big’, ‘bold’ and ‘brassy’, spring to mind. Writer Alan McHugh has used the favourite fairy story as an excuse for some Christmas entertainment of the ‘Sunday night on the telly’ variety.
A stoic Will Young, as a very patient and good natured Spirit of the Bean, holds his own against a couple of seasoned panto pros and variety entertainers in Andy Ford and Richard Cadell (and Sooty). Andy, as Farmer Andy Trot is dad to Silly Simon (Cadell) and Jack (Benjamin Yates) who live just outside the village in the Royal Kingdom of Bristol. Now Bristol is plagued by a very unpleasant giant who has a grisly taste in snacking food – the goodly citizens of Bristol – and when Princess Jill (Ashlyn Weekes) is captured by the giant’s minions, Jack resolves to do something about it, but is initially stumped by any practical means of getting to the giant’s castle which is in the City of Clouds and Stars. That is until the leader of the aforesaid minions, the deliciously cackling Mrs Blunderbore (Charlie Brooks) pulls off the kind of deal that President Trump would be proud of and sells a credulous Jack a bag of ‘magical’ beans. Incidentally Ms Brooks, sparring with Sooty and Sweep, has the best line in the show with her gleefully spiteful, ‘I’m going to use you as oven gloves!’, which tickled us boomers.
Jack and the villagers love nothing better than to have a dance despite the grim circumstances of their kingdom, and their colourful costumes certainly help relieve the gloom (which is in any case hardly evident). Mr Cadell with his chums, Sooty and Sweep, is always on hand to lighten village life with some magic (top notch stuff) and banter with Spirit of the Beans who manages to retain his dignity despite some delightful provocation from Simon, managing, just, to entertain us with a song.
Jack sets off up the fast-growing beanstalk accompanied by Simon on a flying Vespa motor scooter (!). A kind of silly fight ensues with the giant (an enormous puppet as high as the proscenium arch) and the giant is defeated. A variety performance is pronounced as celebration, although in truth that’s what we have been treated to beforehand.
The whole show is glued together by the performers, in particular Andy Ford who is one of that select group of entertainers who are loved by the audiences of their home towns, or towns with which they have become associated. Another is Tweedy in Cheltenham and again John Monie in Bath, performers who know their audience and have that special connection which is only ever learned through experience.
★★★★☆ Graham Wyles, 10 December , 2025
Photography credit: Steve Tanner
