Peter Pan Brum Panto at Birmingham Hippodrome Review
Post
Subscribe
Mon 23 Dec 2024 - Sun 02 Feb 2025
Brum Panto is back with Alison Hammond returning alongside Matt Slack for the second year in a row.
The Great British Bake Off and
This Morning star may be the headliner but there's so much more to this 2024 Birmingham Christmas show.
Within the first half an hour there's a huge crocodile, an even bigger confetti drop across the audience and flames blazing from big song and dance numbers. It's a breathless extravagant start that raises the bar and shows this year's Brum panto means business.
This year,
Peter Pan runs at
Birmingham Hippodrome until Sunday, February 2.
Hammond is the Magical Mermaid, who gets a grand build-up and entrance about 10 minutes in as the 'Queen of Birmingham'. She's got the personality, smile and local nouse to have the audience wrapped around her little finger from the first time she says 'bab'.
If she's the queen then the king has to be popular Matt Slack, pictured above. He's on his eleventh Birmingham panto and is the glue that keeps everything and everyone together. Comedian Slack has great chemistry with Hammond but also with another returning celebrity Danny Mac, pictured below. The former
Strictly Come Dancing contestant and actor is an impressive Captain Hook - an adorable mix of dastardly and silly.
Slack is very much the face of Birmingham's panto - often the biggest in the UK - but this year, he's taken a very slight step back from the limelight, which allows others in the cast to shine and gives more balance to the show as a whole.
Don't worry, he still fronts several favourite segments but the panto feels fresher as there are new jokes and ideas, including a very fun scene with a fire extinguisher. There's also a little more emphasis on following the storyline helped by enthusiastic Billie-Kay as Tink and likeable Noah Harrison as Peter Pan.
Slack's regular sidekick is panto dame Andrew Ryan, seen below, and if anyone had underestimated him, they won't any more. He's always had perfect comic timing, jaw-dropping costumes and acerbic double entendres that toe the line between family jokes and risque but this time there's more.
He leads show-stopping dance routines that are akin to West End musicals. The
I Am What I Am number is sensational. He well and truly steals the limelight this year.
There's a big team of dancers that help with that and their costumes and precise routines add the wow factor. There's an Act One finale with a flying car that will amaze children but actually that's not what makes this panto so special, it's the seamless fun and flow of the production.
Hammond seems more relaxed and comfortable on stage this year and is used well as a narrator-type figure rather than making her do theatrical shenanigans that aren't her forte.
Peter Pan is Birmingham Hippodrome's best panto in years. It's more glitzy and sensational from the get-go with a cast that perfectly gels together. It has an added sparkle that makes the whole show fly by so that you want to rush back and see it all again.
Fabulous family fun that has the ultimate feel-good factor and a perfect cast in a sensational show.
RATING: 5 out of 5 stars
Tickets cost from £18.50 for
Peter Pan at
Birmingham Hippodrome here . It runs until February 2, 2025.
%wnbirmingham
#family_friendly
#theatre_shows
#comedy
#christmas 299791 - 2024-12-22 19:55:35