Review: Beauty and the Beast at the Lyceum in Sheffield will not fail to get you feeling festive

It’s as spectacular, slapstick and silly as ever, with everything you know and love from Sheffield’s biggest panto, plus – cue screams! – Duncan James from Blue! Damian Williams is back, larger than life, for his 16th brilliantly bawdy year as the Dame, this time as Belle’s mum, Madame Bellie Fillop.

He first appears not as Barbie but Lardie, in a pink glitter box, dressed in skintight swimwear that would make even the Beast wince… and so the tone is set for two-and-a-half hours of outrageous, raucous hilarity.

Duncan James is dashing Danton – white teeth gleaming and tanned guns pumped – and happy to send himself up as a boyband has-been (in fact he’s starred in musicals across the West End in his career since Blue) while Jennie Dale from CBeebies’ Swashbuckle is a revelation as fairy godmother style character Cupid.

She’s a superstar of a singer and a clear, well-paced narrator, and her powerhouse vocals – especially her soaraway duet with Belle, actress Bessy Ewa, at the end of Act 1 – are among the standout moments of the show.

But if all that sounds a little too sensible, don’t worry. There’s also plenty of shaving foam, squirts of strawberrry sauce, slips and slides on a stage covered in sheeting and, if you’re in the Stalls, the chance to get spritzed and sprayed by wolves wielding water-pistols!

And don’t think you’re safe in the Circle or the Balcony… Damian Williams’ roving ‘Ken Cam’ is scouring the crowd for a man and, if you’re (un)lucky, you might get picked from the audience to play Bellie Fillop’s love interest for the entire rest of the show. Poor, poor, good sport Richard in row E…

Holding the mayhem together is ventriloquist Max Fulham, with his talking chimpanzee Gordon. Max, as Belle’s brother Philippe Fillop, is a variety star and a true talent, and he and Williams make a tremendous double act. Their ‘bottle of beer’ segment is blumming brilliant.

The plot – not that it really matters – is a modified version of the animated Disney film, complete with costumes and characters almost identical to the movie, so it’s comfortingly familiar to even the littlest ones in the crowd.

Can the Beast – played by Aidan Banyard with a vocoder – make Belle truly love him before the last rose petal falls? Of course he can, in between all the old Lyceum favourites: the wheelbarrow of rapid-fire puns, the Bright Side of Life bench, and the snarky jokes about Barnsley, Rotherham and Doncaster.

With a sprinkling of clap along songs, some air-trombone audience participation, and good old shouts of ‘it’s behind you’, this sensational show guarantees all the warm and fuzzy festive feels as you head off home down Fargate.