The giant takes a lumbering step forward, her arms swinging heavily like battering rams. A whooping cackle flies out as Robbie Abbott tries to find the right lever to make the giant blink. “That’s her mouth!” calls Emily Wood from the warehouse-floor turned catwalk, and Abbott scrambles to raise the giant’s jaw – just as Wood leaps in to save us all from getting knocked over by an enormous fist.
Sitting on muddy land rented from a farmer in Kent, this monumental corrugated warehouse is a Santa’s grotto of pantomime treasures. Although his normal role is as a workshop assistant, Abbott will soon be stomping down from a beanstalk on stage at the Grove theatre in Dunstable, Bedfordshire. “I’ll keep practising,” he beams. Nearby a sedate velvet unicorn looks on, unperturbed.
