Review: Beauty and the Beast - A Horny Love Story (Charing Cross Theatre)

Review by Daz Gale

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Panto season is upon us, offering the perfect opportunity for some family-friendly fun, suitable for all ages. However, sometimes you just want a few good sex jokes and a generous sprinkling of four-letter words, and even Julian Clary draws the line somewhere at the annual Palladium panto. Here to grant your wishes like a genie who expects to be rubbed a very different way are "He's Behind You!", returning to Charing Cross Theatre for their third annual adult panto. This time, it's Beauty and the Beast as you've never seen it before, with the subtitle A Horny Love Story, but would this be a beastly tale as old as time, or one that just gets old?

Written by Jon Bradfield and Martin Hooper, Beauty and the Beast - A Horny Love Story is a new twist on the much-loved fairytale. Set in the Scottish village of Lickmanochers, it tells of an ancient (well, 25-year) curse where an aristocratic brute has been turned into a Beast - his only hope of being restored to his human form is for another to fall in love with him. Enter (literally) Bertie, a young, inexperienced mummy’s boy who becomes his prisoner. Would he be the key to reversing the curse, and, more importantly, would he still be a virgin by the end of the show?

You know the story of Beauty and the Beast, or you may think you do, anyway. While A Horny Love Story offers a new take on the story, it feels comfortably familiar but not identical enough to get sued by Disney. What is perhaps surprising about this panto is how much plot there is. Usually, the plot of a pantomime has been written on a post-it note and is secondary to moving to the next sequence featuring a variety of pantomime favourites. While there is, of course, an element to that in this production, it is quite refreshing how much of a story there actually is, with characters we get to know intimately and even motives, as tenuous as they are.

Bradfield and Hooper weave a fun story that doesn’t take itself too seriously or prove too taxing on the brain, but remains entertaining and even risks getting you invested. Having not been to a He’s Behind You! panto before, I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the writing, with many hilarious lines. Getting the balance right, there wasn’t an overuse of pop culture references, thankfully, and there are even a couple of references for theatre lovers to enjoy (a reference to Sigourney Weaver’s The Tempest being my personal favourite… line, I mean, not the show). The comedy is what makes this show so successful, with every new utterance of another ridiculous and smutty town name always leaving me gagging with laughter,

The other thing to know about Beauty and the Beast - A Horny Love Story is that it’s very gay, and rightly so. Wearing its identity with pride, it is a fabulous safe space for everyone in the LGBTQIA+ community, and all of their allies. Plenty of jokes about what it is like to be a gay man are present in a show that is sex positive and a beautiful bit of escapism from some of the scarier stories on the news. Certain parts of the world may be moving backwards when it comes to right, but any “He’s Behind You” pantomime fittingly keeps the past fittingly there, moving progressively forward.

Let me just get one thing straight (and I use that particular word in the loosest sense), where some pantomimes attempt to cater for different audiences, ensuring that people of all ages can attend, with the more questionable elements designed to entertain adults flying over the heads of the children, this is not that kind of show. This is a pantomime for adults only, unless you want to answer some very awkward questions and have your children’s vocabulary extend to include a lot more four-letter words.

Writer Jon Bradfield has also included some original songs, though some of them may feel eerily familiar. The iconic opening number from Beauty and the Beast gets its own similar version that sets the tone perfectly, while ‘Be Our Guest’ becomes ‘Be Our Slave’. Elsewhere, a Village People-inspired disco number ensures this is as gay as it gets, and wonderfully so. Andrew Beckett’s direction prioritises the comedy, always figuring out how to get the biggest laugh, making full use of the fun set, designed by David Shields.

The talented cast somehow simultaneously makes for a chaotic performance that deliberately feels a bit haphazard, while showcasing all of their strengths with polished routines. It’s a balance that may sound like a contradiction, but it works. So much so that when something goes wrong or a cast member forgets their line, you can never tell if it was scripted or not. A particularly rowdy Friday night audience allowed several cast members to improvise too, responding to surprising reactions or heckles.

Matt Kennedy is a charismatic leading man as Bertie (the Beauty in this story), showcasing fantastic comic ability, gorgeous vocals and a real star quality, whether his character is being cheeky (again, literally) or navigating his own moral quandary (not as deep as it sounds, I promise). Keanu Adolphus Johnson plays his Beast, or Charlie as he is known here, in a dominating performance that plays against Kennedy’s Bertie perfectly. With a booming voice sometimes resembling Matt Berry, he is a delight in a performance that really is beastly good.

Chris Lane camps it up as an over-the-top villainous turn as Cornelius, while Dani Mirels and Laura Anna-Mead are both on fine form as Juno and Bonnie, respectively. The most memorable performance, however, and deserved standout belongs to Matthew Baldwin for his pantomime Dame turn as Flora. Holding everything together fantastically, even when it all falls apart, you are never far from the next laugh when Baldwin is on stage, which thankfully is for most of the show. You get the sense this show is in safe hands with Flora in charge and moving the story along, even when he does miss his line.

Adult pantomimes can be a difficult type of show to get right. Too often, the jokes fall flat, can be rude just for rudeness’ sake, forgetting the necessary comedy to land the joke, or can fill themselves with too many pop references, thinking that all you need to say is “Chappell Roan” with no context to elicit a laugh, as one panto I visited last year demonstrated. Beauty and the Beast - A Horny Love Story doesn’t fall into any of these traps. It is an entertaining romp through all your favourite panto tropes while bringing an actual plot gasp to it at the same time.

With a flawless hit rate of laughs, this pantomime manages to be both brilliantly stupid and stupidly brilliant. This pantomime has clearly been crafted by a team who know what their audience wants, and just how to give it to them. The result is a beast of a show that penetrates so deeply, you may have trouble walking for a while.

Beauty and the Beast - A Horny Love Story plays at Charing Cross Theatre until 11th January. Tickets from https://allthatdazzles.londontheatredirect.com/musical/beauty-and-the-beast-a-horny-love-story-tickets

Photos by Steve Gregson