REVIEW: BEAUTY AND THE BEAST by Luke Adamson at Bridge House Theatre, Penge 13 - 30 December 2025
‘It's a paradox of panto, that the more seriously its cast and creatives take it, the more fun it is for the audience.’ ★★★★
It’s that time of year when the Marmite of theatrical expression pulls on its frock, gets out the custard pies and rusted puns and sets out to give an audience nothing more than a good time. Panto – you either love it (me) or hate it (killjoys), and the Bridge’s annual offering has all the elements necessary to confirm both the fans and the Scrooges in their prejudices.
Beauty and the Beast, the familiar story, here transposed to Penge-sur-Mer where an arrogant handsome posh Prince Philipe (Theo Bracey) will be transformed by a spell as a hairy monster into the sort of kind, caring, altruist (but still a Prince!) that dowdy commoner Belle (Georgina May Haley) could take home to her mother, if she had one. She hasn’t, of course, only a Dame in the not entirely comely shape of castle cleaner Fifi (Cameron Griffiths) and a nemesis in a very boo-able villainous Lady Amere (Cassandra Hodges), and the stage is set for two hours of song, dance, not entirely logical plot and manic entries and exits.
Director Matthew Parker clearly aimed to start the energy high and turn it up to 11, with a massive and beautifully choreographed opening number that hints how much the cast of four will somehow feel like a much bigger number as the show goes on. The Bridge House once again uses its small space to great effect – minimal props but audio-visual backdrops that whisk us from castle to town centre streets to dark and dangerous forests, and there’s a happy mix of getting on with it and winking at the audience about the conventions of the genre (‘What was that?’ – ‘That was a sound effect intended to suggest a window breaking’).
It's a paradox of panto, that the more seriously its cast and creatives take it, the more fun it is for the audience. Beauty and the Beast scores high on that level. It's also tremendously good natured even if it feels a little understructured at times: there are a lot of songs (uniformly strongly sung), and some standard panto set-pieces (a routine about dusting musty busts; a custard pie sequence) feeling a little like sketches within the show rather than fully integrated action. There’s also the occasional hint of Idle Eric in the scripting, though well-delivered jokes and puns fly fast and furious and earn a lot of laughs.
There’s a real team feel to the four performers, although each gets their moment, with Griffiths in particular demonstrating a vocal range that serves a Dame superbly and Hodges proving with relish that villains have the most fun. Unless you have a heart of stone, you’ll walk out smiling – oh, yes you will.
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST by Luke Adamson
Directed and choreographed by Matthew Parker
Bridge House Theatre, Penge, 13 to 30 December
Photography: Lidia Crisafulli
Reviewer David Weir’s plays include Confessional (Oran Mor, Glasgow) and Better Together (Jack Studio, Brockley, London), and he has won the Write Now and Constance Cox awards and been twice longlisted for the Bruntwood Prize. His first novel will be published in the summer of 2026.
