Do not be misled by the title. This is a takeover. Not only has this Jack and the Beanstalk gone from fairy story to panto to musical, but Jack has been relegated to second billing. To be accurate, this “new moooosical” by Jonathan O’Neill and Isaac Savage should be called Caroline and the Beanstalk, Caroline being the name of the highland cow who is adopted by Jack’s family and becomes sole supplier of milk for their Glen and Sherry’s brand of ice-cream.
Played by an excellent Suzie McAdam, all ginger hair and stoicism, she is treated as an equal until the business fails. Then, it only takes a few magic beans for her to wind up in the Happy Smiles Petting Zoo, being prodded by unseen children while trying to hatch an escape plan with a hen, a llama and a pig. After some sub-Wallace and Gromit shenanigans, she is back home and ready to sort out the fickle Jack (Ronan O’Hara) and his troublesome beanstalk.
In Stephen Whitson’s production, it is done with much pizzazz by a 10-strong cast (plus the giant voice of Brian Cox), but the shift in emphasis is at the expense of the fable’s archetypal pull.
Gone is any sense of the wonderment of a magical land, of the terror of being a child in an adult world and of the David and Goliath struggle between good and evil. In its place, a hazily dramatised caper about a single-minded cow, marred by the cynicism not only of Jack’s mum Sherry (Laura Lovemore), which you would expect, but of Jack himself, which feels all wrong.
The story meanders away from its own heart, relying on expository dialogue to spell out the lessons learned: telling not showing. It does not help that many of the songs only delay the action.
And yet those songs, an Americana-influenced collection that go from Broadway to vaudeville to rap, build the showbiz illusion that something greater is at stake: McAdam’s power ballad Udderly Alone being a case in point, key change and all. With crisp choreography by Lisa Darnell and some gorgeous harmonies under Savage’s musical direction, it is superficially lively but emotionally in the clouds.
At Dundee Rep until 30 December
