BWW Reviews: CINDERELLA AND THE BEANSTALK, Theatre 503, December 5 2014

They're not "BEHIND YOU", they're not even in the wings - because the actors haven't turned up at all! But there is an audience and it's hungry for its annual panto fix, so the three lads of Sleeping Trees gamely take on the job - or rather, jobs, as this panto has pretty much every panto somewhere inside it.

Cue madcap bantering, pratfalling and singing from the trio: James Dunnell-Smith (who would rather be at home watching Home Alone); Joshua George Smith (who would rather be Barbra Streisand); and John Woodburn (who manages to play both Ugly Sisters and Prince Charming - and win any Stuart Broad lookalike competitions he may fancy if he chooses). Through teamwork, past bickering and suffused with bonhomie, they get through the 90 minutes and we get our panto.

The show follows the template of the "Potted Potter" / "Reduced Shakespeare" shows cramming as many references to pantos as possible into the loosest of plots (a tiny, malevolent Rumpelstiltskin is filling Panto Prison) and it's a lot of fun because you simply don't know who, or what is coming next. The lads have a whale of a time and so do we, the chaos enhanced by a deadpan Mark Newnham delivering a bewildering array of sound effects and musical accompaniment. It's pitched at a family audience too, with barely a double entendre to concern a parent and lots of the clowning kids love.

This is an Edinburgh-style show - long on invention and enthusiasm, short on budget and rehearsal, but it's well done, funny and will delight kids and parents jaded by the slickness (and prices) of traditional big pantos. So leave your inhibitions in the same place that the company left the fourth wall, make some noise when you have to and remember that panto, like Christmas, comes but once a year - and for that we must be thankful.

Cinderella and the Beanstalk continues at Theatre 503 until 10 January.