Jack and the Beanstalk review – dancing chickens meet the mother of all dames

‘Heaven’s alone what the Dickens, let’s bring on the singing chickens’ … Jack and the Beanstalk at Nottingham Playhouse. Photograph: Pamela Raith

It’s not often that a latecomer to the stalls is heckled by a pantomime dame – and a magnificently ad-libbing one at that. “Don’t tell me you were getting ready. I’m in this,” Dame Daisy Trott shoots out to the offender, pointing to her elaborate dress, piled so high with fruit and vegetation that she looks like a campy Carmen Miranda.

From the moment John Elkington flounces on as Dame Daisy, the mother of Jack (Finton Flynn) and his simpleton brother (Bradley Judge), Elkington holds the audience in the palm of his hand and tickles us silly with his off-the-cuff jokes and glorious costumes (a hot-air balloon at one point, a glamorous green bean at another).