Review: 'Big Dick Whittington - The Adult Pantomime' (28/02/25)

Review of 'Big Dick Whittington - The Adult Pantomime' – Spa Pavilion, Felixstowe – 28th February 2025

Hayley Clapperton

As published here | On YouTube here

The Adult Pantomime is back on the road for its 7th year and for 2025 it is Dick Whittington…..immediately you can guess the jokes.

I’ve never been to an adult panto before therefore had no idea what level of ‘rude’ it might be, however I am open minded, not easily offended and could certainly do with a laugh.

And laugh I did.

It took a little while to warm up, possibly because the audience were like me, initially cautious and trying to work out the humour and the tone of the night as Fairy (Megan Robson) kicked off the evening with her narration – which included the intro of Dick coming to London to seek his fortune as the road is paved with gold … and dog sh*t and needles.

When Dick gets to London he gets a job with the dame Fanny Fitztightly (Jimmy Burton-Iles) who runs a bakery and a sex shop – as you can imagine, there are endless joke opportunities here. Alongside Idle Jack (Liam Mellor), love interest Alice, and side kick Tommy the Cat, they have to fight off the threats from the baddie who is Queen Rat (Robert Squire).

By the way, Tommy the Cat is a hand puppet – open to more rudeness. Like any panto it was filled with one liner jokes, being the adult version it will be about a circumcision clinic and how it was a rip off. It gets the laughs, they all got the laughs, it was funny.

The storyline of Dick Whittington is pretty much as you would expect and with any panto it is a thin thread to string the random scenes together. However, I didn’t actually think the scenes were that random – I mean I’ve been to some where it’s so out of synch it made no sense at all. This one certainly had a flow, of its own this is true, but there was a flow.

They had the classic scenes with the typical shout outs such as oh yes you do, he’s behind you, let’s go it again shall we…and all the rest, including water pistols into the audience not only were their water pistols super hyped-up long distance versions, they came up the aisles – no one was safe.

The effort in production, set design and costumes were all panto quality, they hadn’t downplayed it just because its adult themed.

The chorus were a group of four energetic dancers who performed great choreography which was was pretty physical and with long sequences – well done to them. Their outfits were also sexy and raunchy with lots of costume changes.

Let’s quickly summarise, we have a panto, an outrageous dame, dancing, a baddie, romance, a puppet, singing, sarcasm, jokes, teasing, costumes and decent sets. A regular panto! What makes it adult are the rude sex jokes plus the swearing.  Oh and a couple of large phallus shaped props. The ship is called the Salty Swallow, so that gives you an idea of how almost everything was an innuendo.

They could have easily created an adult panto which was overtly rude, crass, offensive, uncouth, distasteful, misogynistic and obnoxious, however I felt they really had the balance right between plenty of rude jokes, sexual innuendos and a good scattering of decent swearing. Even the raunchiness was perfectly acceptable, which made it a enjoyable, watchable funny show.

The icing on the cake was the hilarious banter, whether it was between the actors themselves, or if they messed up, which made them laugh and us in turn ior banter with the audience which made us also laugh. In addition, the clear camaraderie of the actors on stage and the connection with each other, they were just having a great time. 

They really managed to engage the audience by getting half of us standing at a time for a competitive sing song and we all were up dancing and clapping at the end.

It was a fun, laugh out loud entertaining show, just remember it’s adults only.

With thanks to Spa Pavilion, Felixstowe.

Video Review on YouTube.

Photo: Hayley Clapperton