Jack and the Beanstalk - directed by Colin Hedivan, music by Michael Nicholas Williams, lyrics by Paul Jenden, music directed by Marie Brooks.
Review by Aaron Potaka
Forget magic beans, a land of giants and consummated love.
Children in the audience will be familiar to some degree with the motifs of economic recession Mr Hall has crow-barred into the Jack and the Beanstalk story: child poverty, debt loading, asset sales, substance abuse, poor nutrition, inter-generational unemployment, financial illiteracy and socio-economic crime.
This story morphs into an alternative panto universe of a lazy, do-nothing, good-for-nothing, thieving, unemployed, young anti-hero on the WINZ benefit, and his rent-shirking mother getting lucky with a goose.