Grand Opera House, Belfast
With her lurid blue eyeshadow, gap-toothed grin and decorous pearls, drag queen May McFettridge – aka comedian John Linehan – is Northern Ireland's longest serving pantomime dame. She's been supplying bawdy humour and and a steady stream of innuendo to appreciative audiences at Belfast's Grand Opera House for decades. In previous years, minor soap stars and other lesser celebrities have taken leading roles at the Opera House pantomime, leaving less room for May's distinctive brand of earthy humour. But in this year's production,
Jack and the Beanstalk, there are no such distractions. From the moment she drives on stage in a smart car, McFettridge – as Dame May Trott – is the star: expansive, garrulous, cackling and surprisingly sharp with the impromptu gags.
Gleeful smut is the motif of most successful pantomimes, and this show is no exception. During a rendition of Lady Gaga's hit,
Born This Way, McFettridge's enormous fake breasts burst into song, a feat achieved through some canny puppetry. It's bold, shameless, tacky – and the audience absolutely loves it. Day-Z, the rapping cow, inspires another favourite: a heartfelt adaptation of Chicago's soft-rock classic,
If You Leave Me Cow, complete with bovine chorus.
Pop-cultural references abound in this production:
Glee, My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, The X Factor, I'm a Celebrity . . .and many more are name-checked repeatedly. Perhaps it's intended as a way of engaging the audience and demonstrating a common cultural currency with them, but it feels effortful and unnecessary. What really does work, however, is the rather spectacular 3D effects, which come into play after the interval. It sounds like a cheap gimmick, but the spiders, dragons and ogres popping up right under your nose really do enhance the on-stage action.
One potential problem: people from outside the North may have trouble getting many of the gags. The action is set in "the magical village of Ahoghill" (in reality a distinctly un-magical village in Co Antrim), and there are numerous quips about local places, people and politicians, understandable only to the initiated. And of course, McFettridge herself is a definably Northern phenomenon, long held in mysterious affection by the public.
This pantomime has pizazz. But, like Belfast's labyrinthine one-way traffic system, you do have to come from here to make sense of it.
runs until January 21st
