'Funny, cheeky, charming and clever' – Our five-star review of Birmingham Hippodrome's pantomime Jack and the Beanstalk
"Let’s banish her to Wolverhampton", booms Brummie Alison Hammond to a packed-out theatre as she makes her panto debut in the city while drawing laughs from an excitable home audience.
The larger-than-life personality is on home turf and she’s looking, sounding, and clearly feeling, comfortable.
"This is a honestly a dream come true for me," she tells the crowd in her first Birmingham panto run after wanting and waiting to perform on the Hippodrome's stage for many years.
In a touching tribute to her late mum Maria on stage, she reveals her first trip to the Hippodrome was to see West Side Story and she points at the pair sitting in the seats near to A15 before saying "and that there is her seat, I feel like she's with me tonight. I can feel her presence."
This emotional moment brings Alison full circle with the audience after a perfect, belly-laugh inducing pantomime performance of Jack and the Beanstalk.
Once again, this is without a doubt the UK's biggest regional panto for the festive season – and in it Alison (who can by the way both dance and sing) is playing The Spirit of the Beans.
So there's a huge beanstalk that emerges from the centre of the audience and grows up to the ceiling (that Jack actually climbs), an enormous moving, talking giant that commands the entire stage, there's fire and smoke, glitter, buckets of water, water pistols and an endless array of hilarious props, songs and jokes.
