Nothing’s more festive than a pantomime, the one time of year you can act the fool. And it wouldn’t be a panto without over the top performances, outrageous costumes, a man in drag and a healthy dose of audience participation and use of innuendo. This was true of Jack and the Beanstalk at Hammersmith’s Lyric Theatre, a classic story with a contemporary twist, featuring tailored jokes, adult humour, life size puppets and a rendition of Beyonce’s Single Ladies

Unusually the panto has a real community feel to it and local slant, being set in Hammersmith and with references to the Borough’s amenities. The show’s director Steve Marmion also successfully managed to modernise the dated tale of Jack and the Beanstalk using the credit crunch as an explanation to why the main characters, Jack and his mum, the dame, Ms Wendy Windsor, played by experienced television actor Martyn Ellis, live in a bean tin in the middle of a roundabout, the only green space in Hammersmith, according to the story.

Another twist to the tale is Jack’s cow who is actually a Spanish bull named El Especial, the Special One, which the audience are taught to repeat each time he appears on stage and who opens the show with jokes based on popular advert Compare the Market. No surprise that El Especial is the audiences’ favourite character with a less than traditional costume of cow print bottoms and muscle top.

Sean Kearns also gives a great performance as Plug, baddie Evelyn Greedly’s Irish side-kick and Ms Wendy Windsor’s love interest, who has a tendency to burst into song and whose energy and enthusiasm represents all that is panto. As well as young Natalie Best playing the part of Jill, Jack’s girlfriend, who owns the stage and produces a great vocal, even with most of the song’s ridiculous lyrics.

The most impressive features in the panto is the mechanical talking snails that live alongside the bean tin and Gog the giant, a huge puppet voiced by Patrick Stewart of Waiting for Godot, who puts his prisoners through a demanding schedule making giant marshmallow’s, a deviation from the original story which nevertheless adds to the production.

Unfortunately the experienced actors are let down by the performances of the young ensemble; whose acting seems forced and basic costumes go against the tradition that is pantomime, as well as the many gimmicks the cast use to entice the audience, such as throwing magic beans (balls) to the audience and asking them to pass them back, they are only asking for trouble, engaging the audience in a tug of war match and throwing sweets into the audience, something that is normally relied on in an amateur production.