**Charing Cross Theatre • 21st Nov ‘25 - 11 Jan ‘26**

Mix a familiar fairy tale with the camp excess of pantomime, sprinkle liberally with a hefty dose of adult humour, add an incredible cast, some gorgeous sets and a few sassy songs and you’ve got yourself an unmissable festive night of fun!

It might only be 4 days into December, but panto season is well and truly underway with Beauty And The Beast - A Horny Love Story being this years offering from production company He’s Behind You, who return to the Charring Cross Theatre to build on the previous success of Jack And The Beanstalk: What A Whopper, (2024) and Sleeping Beauty Takes A Prick (2023). With these cheekily amended titles offering much in the way of setting out their stall for what’s to come, this third outing once again reunites writers Jon Bradfield and Martin Hooper with director Andrew Beckett and their resident pantomime dame Matthew Baldwin, all ready to serve-up a main course of familiar pantomime faire with a large slice of adult humour and all the naughty trimmings on the side. Actually there are more (a)sides than main dish as Villeneuve’s original fairy tale is merely the hanger upon which Bradfield and Hooper can weave their salacious festive magic… which they do right from the start as we find the story being transported to Scotland, (“Another year, another accent” sighs Baldwin in one of the many hilarious fourth wall-crumbling nods to the audience), and to the remote Scottish hamlet of Lickmanochers, a stones throw away from the neighbouring village, Suckmacoch! (You might want to take another look at those two names as they are mined for plenty of one-liners throughout. “I’m off to Suckmacoch for my Christmas shopping!”, being just one that comes to mind).

It’s clear we are in for a splendidly filthy ol’ time, with plenty of double entendres and just as many more robust adult references you probably wouldn’t want to explain to your parents across the Christmas dinner table, never mind the kids. Political correctness has definitely not been invited to this party, and the results are all the better for it. With Beauty, (otherwise known here as Bertie, played by Matt Kennedy) and Beast (a cursed Charlie superbly played by Keanu Adolphus Johnson) both being male, what follows is not only just about as camp as any other pantomime you might stumble across this festive season, but it also proudly wears it’s LGBTQ+ credentials firmly on it’s sleeve, with Berties twin sister Bonnie (Laura Anna-Mead) a lesbian who, along with her brother, assumes she will forever remain a “Lickmanochers virgin”, but before she can leave the tiny village she also finds love in the form of an Aussie good fairy, (resplendent with Sidney Opera House shoulder pads), Juno (Dani Mirels). There’s even some romantic hope for our glorious pantomime dame Flora, (so called because she is so “easily spread”), but for our hero, Bertie, he must first escape from his imprisonment at the Beasts castle and show him true love so that he might lift Charlie from his beastly curse.

With a nine-strong cast, many of who double up as different characters throughout, the story that unfolds seems surprisingly intricate for such a crowd pleasing pantomime, arguably a bit too much as no sooner have the actors taken to the stage than the audience is immediately faced with a dense chunk of exposition, delivered as a fast-paced rhyming couplet info-dump, the finer points of which become a bit lost as the audience acclimatise themselves to the sensory overload that is panto. Thankfully this remains the only misstep in what is otherwise a highly enjoyable romp. It’s sufficient to know that Cornelius (Chris Lane), is responsible for his brother Charlie’s beastly curse, and as such becomes the evil villain for the piece, but I remained slightly more baffled as to the origins of a last will and testament that had been hidden at the Beasts castle. All of that being said, there’s no doubting the first class performances from this impressive cast, whose on-stage antics are expertly directed by Beckett, skilfully managing to keep things at a frenetic pace without allowing it to slip into chaos. Add into the mix the superb backdrops of David Shield’s impressive set design, that not only take us from a rural village petrol station/shop to a creepy castle, (surprisingly avoiding the temptation to reference The Traitors beyond a musical nod) but also, rather less predictably, to a North Sea oil rig, the perfect setting it would seem for a Village People style song and dance number, all of which add up to delivering one of the better panto options London has on offer this year.

Whilst I must confess to being struck by an early sense of trepidation by the 2hrs 30min runtime, (incl. intermission), as I pondered if a pantomime could sustain such a meaty duration I am glad to say it did, and in truth I could have easily taken a little bit more… Ooh-er, missus!!

★★★★