It might be faint praise but this adaptation of Disney’s 1997 animated film, which plays fast and loose with ancient Greek myth, is like the slickest panto you’ve ever seen. Director/choreographer Casey Nicholaw’s production is pacy and family friendly, full of cheery songs and snarky jokes: Luke Brady’s pumped-up, perma-grinning and clumsily super-strong Hercules is “a menace to society, and we haven’t even been around that long”, as a plaintive Agora-dweller puts it.
There are unthreatening puppet monsters, from a many-headed Hydra to a galumphing Cyclops, and a quintet of fairy godmothers in the shape of a girl-group chorus of sassy, finger-wagging, big-voiced Muses. “Girl, you mean HUNK-ules!”, says one, rolling her eyes over the bulging pecs and biceps revealed by our dimwitted hero’s mesh toga.
