menu
Theatre

PREVIEW: ‘Jack And the Beanstalk: What A Whopper!’ at Charing Cross Theatre

Brian Butler November 21, 2024

A team of five theatre makers, whose acclaimed adult gay pantos regularly filled the now-gone Above The Stag Theatre, are reunited in the outrageously rude, camp and brilliant Jack And the Beanstalk: What A Whopper!, which runs at London’s Charing Cross Theatre from 23 November to 11 January.

It’s written by Jon Bradfield and Martin Hooper, directed by Andrew Beckett, with sets by David Shields, and stars Matthew Baldwin as Dame Dolly Trott. These five men can be guaranteed to raise laughs and eyebrows as they did for a number of seasons at Vauxhall’s now defunct Above The Stag.

They’re joined in the creative team by the highly virtuosic Aaron Clingham as orchestrator and MD and Brighton-based theatre maker Carole Todd as choreographer. Both Aaron and Carole also had strong associations with Above The Stag – a much loved and missed LGBTQ+ theatre.

Dame Dolly, was the matriarch of a rural soap opera for 20 years, until scandal and swindle finished her career and her fortune. She is forced to fall back on her son Jack (Keanu Adolphus Johnson) and eke a living on his dilapidated dairy farm.

Jack is poor, gay and very, very horny – being 10 miles from the nearest Grindr user and living in the Yorkshire village of Upper Bottom. Can fortune provide him with something giant?

I’m sure you’ve got the idea. If previous shows by the production company He’s Behind You are anything to go by these will be the most double entendres and innuendos you’ve heard since the passing of Kenneth Williams and Larry Grayson.

Strictly for adults, it’s a festive must.

You can book HERE

X