The birth of a star

Pantomime dames do not come much meatier - and funnier - than Clive Rowe. With his vibrating lips, enormous voice and full-bodied stage presence he is the superb, undoubted star of this year's Hackney Empire panto.

Such a wonder palace, the Empire. Frank Matcham's theatre, 104 years old, is back in the pink and this show matches its exuberant interiors. Mr Rowe plays Dame Trot, mother of young Jack (Matt Dempsey). "Oooh, Jack, my little caucasian, you!" rumbles beefy, black Dame Trot to her thoroughly white boy.

Jack's best friends are Billy (engagingly done by Terel Nugent) and Molly (Tameka Empson). If you add this to Miss Empson's recent performance as a West Indian Dame Edna in The Big Life at the Apollo, it's surely fair to call her one of the year's comic finds.

It's a melancholy business to go to a panto without one's children, I had to rely on others' youngsters around me to gauge the comedy. The ones who seemed most amused were in the age ten bracket, though younger beasts enjoyed the opportunities for shouting "behind you!" "boo!" and "nickers, Billy" (when anyone approached a sledge owned by Billy).

The front few rows were not completely full. If the audience participation was a little quieter than it can be, this may have been the reason. Spare seats for the run will surely not be available much longer. This show is high-grade fun. Vintage goofing.

The baddies are a Runner Bean (Michael Kirk) and his Broad Bean wife (Susie McKenna). Quite what the Department of Health will make of greens being made a hate object one shudders to think. The other big star in this Beanstalk, apart from a lively band, is the giant. It is a huge costume puppet with swinging hands, moving eyes and as hairy a nose as I have seen since the late Lord Goodman's.

In most Beanstalk pantos the giant comes to a sticky end but the versatile Miss McKenna, who also wrote the script as well as directing, felt pity stir in her heart. She granted the monster a reprieve. Giants, apparently, are not to be hated.

They are a minority to be cherished. And so the giant is spared, although he departs with the assurance that instead of eating small humans in future he will be a vegetarian. Poor schmuck. After a few months of sprouts and pulses and nut ruddy cutlets he'll soon wish he'd perished.

Jack And The Beanstalk