Beowulf – The Panto! – review

Beowulf: 'boutique' panto. Photograph: Richard Davenport

The Charles Court Opera have built a reputation as one of the best value tickets in town in the five or so years since the company was formed.

Their Gilbert and Sullivan productions – they put on at least one a year at the King’s Head Theatre or the Rosemary Branch – have in recent years been joined by an annual ’boutique’panto, a riot of double entendre, melodramatic singing and sublimely funny dance routines to rival anything in the West End.

This year’s, Beowulf – The Panto!, offers a hilarious take on the epic Anglo-Saxon poem.

It comes in both regular and “adults only” form. I chose to see the latter and was in stitches.

All the cast are great but there are standout deliveries from Philip Lee, a great comic performer, as the monster Grendel, and John Savournin, who also directs the show, as Grendel’s mother. The superb Simon Masterton-Smith is wonderful as inebriated King Hrothgar.

One of the best you are likely to see all year.

There is still time to catch Beowulf – The Panto! at the Rosemary Branch Theatre, 2 Shepperton Road, De Beauvoir Town N1 until 8 January 2012. For tickets call 020 7704 6665