27 November 2025
When was the last time you laughed so much at a pantomime that your ribs hurt? Laughed until you actually lost the capacity to make any further sound and instead resorted to clamping you hand over your silent mouth, all the while clutching your aching ribs?
Well that happened to me this week at Growled – Beauty and the Beast Continues, the latest panto at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern in Vauxhall. And I certainly wasn’t expecting that!
A sequel to Beauty & The Beast, which I didn’t see (absolutely no hinderance, it turns out), Growled -Beauty and the Beast Continues tells the hilarious and untold tale of Belle and her Prince once the classic Disney story ends and they face the reality of ‘happy ever after’ with him transformed into a human prince, which it turns out is more than a bit boring for Belle. It’s up to her father, The Inventorer to create a Tardis-like time machine – actually a rudimentary hula hoop affair – to go back in time before the beast and Belle kissed to rewrite history and also save the people transformed into household objects around the palace.
The jewel in this panto’s crown is most definitely diminutive Ada Campe, a multi award-winning variety artiste, cabaret performer, comedian and magician who has a twinkly, mischevious world-weary demeanour and eyepopping delivery that she adds to every double entendre as Belle’s father, The Inventorer. She has great fun turning back time initially just a couple of lines of dialogue, leading to questions and inappropriate answers in the style made famous by Barry Cryer writing for The Two Ronnies. Priceless!
And Ada has one of the best characters and lines to deliver in the funniest version of the great panto patter song “If I were Not Upon This Stage…” I have ever heard.
“If I were Not Upon This Stage… I’d be a Strictly judge: Bye Bye Tess, Bye bye Claude, Lovely Cha Cha Cha, SEVEN!”
The other character highlight of this topical song is sung by Robert McNeilly as the bearded teapot Mrs Spout, who always wants to spill the T on her entrance! One of his characters (the song gets through almost a dozen professions in 9 minutes of verbal and choral brilliance) riffs on the recent Celebrity Traitors TV hit.
“If I were Not Upon This Stage… I’d be a winning Traitor: Kill Paloma! Kill Paloma! Dodge the Celia fart!”
I saw my first gay panto when I arrived to live and work in London 43 years ago. The production was a scrappy version of Cinderella staged in a Battersea pub called the Spread Eagle, and performed on a tiny stage no bigger than a dining table in the corner of the bar. The Uglies were played by soon-to-be drag legends David Dale (who would make the leap to TV in C4’s If They’d Asked for a Lion Tamer in 1984) and a certain Paul O’Grady who as Lily Savage would go on to be one of the biggest and most popular stars at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern in an eight-year rein before he made the leap to the West End and TV mega-stardom. Incidentally, soon after the panto I attended O’Grady and his friend Hush joined with Dale to form an act known as “LSD” – Lily, Sandra, and Doris.
The RVT I remember fondly from the 80s was a distinctly shabby affair – today it has a wonderful video wall (used to great effect here for switching location backdrops and to show video inserts) and a shiny black freshly painted floor and lots of comfortable seating (although there is still no lock on the ladies toilet! Lol).
I’m going to name check the rest of the hard working cast because they are all superb: Lucy Penrose (who once played Judy Garland in a show I worked on) is Belle. She’s a feisty heroine whose best scenes are on film, with her singing while running up and down backstage theatre corridors (echoing Tom Francis in Sunset Blvd) then serenading the crowds in the street below from the top floor of the RVT in full Eva Peron/Rachel Zegler mode on the balcony in EVITA outside the London Palladium. It’s extremely silly and very funny, but technically accomplished and makes excellent use of the venue’s high definition video wall.
Matthew Ferry is a very dashing Beast/Prince with an angelic voice, Katherine Leyva Villager Number One and Jo Wickham Asston, with Musical Director Annemarie Lewis Thomas providing all the musical support from her trusty keyboard sat among the punters.
The writers – Paul Joseph (PopHorror) and Tim Benzie (Solve Along A Murder She Wrote) – really respect the conventions of panto and have a love for the genre, yet their intelligent and frequently extremely silly script is definitely one for grown ups. No cheap knob jokes or even bad taste to be found here, missus! Instead, lots of Musical Theatre references and political satire, all lovingly shoe-horned in. And no running gag or character outstays its welcome.
The script’s love of all things MT is lovingly buffed up by director Tim McArthur (also credited for “light choreography”). He really is in his element and it was lovely watching his reaction to the gales of laughter breaking out around the venue – he was beaming a smile from ear to ear. The RVT as producers must have massive balls of steel to invite critics to the very first performance after just a 2-week rehearsal period and no previews. But I am delighted to report that their panto is not only ship shape, it is positively gleaming, with everything firing on all cylinders on opening/press night.
So do yourselves a favour and check it out and take the opportunity to see inside one of London’s most iconic and last surviving LGBTQ+ cabaret and performance venues. I really can’t recommend this show too highly. Oh no I can’t!
