Review: BEAUTY AND THE BEAST: A HORNY LOVE STORY, Charing Cross Theatre

In an age of transphobic fearmongering about any drag queen daring to perform in front of children, acknowledging the fact that British family entertainment traditions have always been queer feels more important than ever. LGBTQ+ panto company He’s Behind You takes this one step further, extending the concept of queer adult panto to its full, glorious potential.

Merging drag and the panto tradition does at first feel like a tautology. This is true, but then again you’re unlikely to get quite so many jokes about OnlyFans elsewhere in the pantomime genre, or a Gilbert & Sullivan parody full of euphemisms for gay men, or a story where the moral, delivered with a knowing grin, is to “sleep with controlling men”.

In this loose take on Beauty and the Beast, set in the Scottish town of Lickmanochers, “wee gay virgin boy” Bertie (Matt Kennedy) develops a severe case of “Stockholm syndrome bullsh*t” when captured by Keanu Adolphus Johnson’s reclusive Beast. Their romance develops under the watchful eye of Bertie’s mother Flora, played by He’s Behind You regular Matthew Baldwin in a sardonic, long-suffering take on the pantomime dame.

This may all sound like outrageous silliness, but there is much room in Jon Bradfield and Martin Hooper’s writing for power ballads about being the only gay person in your small town, or anxieties around being a virgin in your twenties. These (slightly) more serious references to contemporary queer life fit seamlessly with the call-and-response and ‘badum tss’ jokes of pantos past, and this is the production’s strength.

Our leads are backed up by a robust supporting cast, not least the sadistic chorus of ghosts in monochromatic Tudor get-ups haunting the castle. Meanwhile, Bertie’s lesbian sister Bonnie (Laura Anna-Mead) gets a pleasing romantic subplot of her own, and a musical number dedicated to the U-Hauling stereotype (though a plot point about her love interest being the enchantress who originally cast the spell on the Beast doesn’t quite live up to its comic potential).

With so much going on, it’s inevitable here that some of the mile-a-minute gags don’t quite land – there’s a lengthy Phantom of the Opera parody before the plot really gets moving – but most of the time, the company nails the deceptively difficult trick of knowing how much is enough time to spend on a joke.

What’s more, a few pacing missteps can easily be forgiven with the high production values on display, particularly in Robert Draper’s costumes. Baldwin as the dame dons ambitious, sculptural looks inspired by the Loch Ness Monster and by a Wedgwood teapot, and there are more than a few tartan Vivienne Westwood pastiches to go around.

Bradfield and Hooper love to break the fourth wall, and at one point our dame declares “it’s panto, it’s hardly going to be about cancer”. She’s right that Beauty and the Beast: A Horny Love Story is resolutely light-hearted, but don’t let the innuendos and frothiness conceal the warmth, festive dose of queer affirmation at this show’s core.

Beauty and the Beast: A Horny Love Story plays at Charing Cross Theatre until 11 January 2026