Review: The Scouse Red Riding Hood at Liverpool's Royal Court ****

After Dick Whittington, Cinderella and Jack and the Beanstalk, the Royal Court team has sunk its teeth into another famous fairytale for Christmas 2024.

Although technically the teeth aren’t the Court’s at all. Because when Scouse Red Riding Hood co-baddie Drew Schofield flashes the fangs in question, they turn out to be one of the most famous pairs of gnashers in Liverpool. Surprise surprise!

Saying that, “what big teeth you have,” is probably one of the few bits of Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm’s original cautionary tale of stranger danger that has survived this royally ribald – but not quite as rude as usual – reworking from writer Kevin Fearon, given extra spit and polish in the rehearsal room by the cast under the gleeful director’s eye of a chortling Mark Chatterton.

When the Everyman Rock ‘n’ Roll panto tackled the same fairytale three years ago, it informed a somewhat earnest story about social inequality.

The Court’s seasonal offering also has a bigger target in sight, but in this case commercial exploitation/corporate greed in the guise of Schofield and Keddy Sutton as Cash and Carrie, the groovy couple who are scheming to swindle Grandma (Lindzi Germain) out of her ‘Lidlpool’ cottage so they can flatten it and build a money-making multistorey car park on the site. Bwa-ha-ha-ha.

Above: Andrew Schofield (Cash) and Keddy Sutton (Carrie). Top: The Scouse Red Riding Hood cast. Photos by Atanas Paskanev.

They’ve got their work cut out though, because it should surprise no Royal Court regular to learn that even though sweet-natured granddaughter Red (Lydia Morales Scully) and her best mate Little Blue (Adam McCoy – in fine voice) keep an eye on her, Germain’s granny is no timid old lady in a mop cap and shawl.

The luckless duo cycle through plans A, B, C, D and E, one of which (it’s easy to lose count) involves a mix up with a flask of saucy elixir that puts even more of a spring into grandma’s step and fire in the loins of Blue’s cheery dad Bob the Builder (Liam Tobin). Much in the same vein as Rene and Yvette in 'Allo 'Allo.

It also leads to Tobin, essaying his best Nigel Tufnel from Spinal Tap look in a prog rocker wig, cavorting gamely in skin-tight leggings and a preposterous codpiece amid the cottage’s tasteless 70s decor in one of many delightfully daft scenes.

Yet another, involving one of several subplots, takes the action far, far beyond Lidlpool. But then we know from Scouse of the Antarctic, Little Scouse on the Prairie and Scouse Pacific that Liverpudlians pop up everywhere.

It’s definitely beyond the Court’s non-existent fourth wall anyway.

Above: Lindzi Germain (Grandma) and Liam Tobin -(in a different wig) as Bob the Builder. Photo by Atanas Paskalev

Talking of the fourth wall, this season the team has upped the ante by adding an additional sly, running metatheatre gag which centres around Chantel Cole as a harassed stage manager who is roped in to cover vocals for a poorly cast member, but which expands to embrace a hapless series of Play that Goes Wrong-style catastrophes and Noises Off moments.

Cole, making her Royal Court debut, more than holds her own among the regular cast and her bravura performance of Whitney Houston’s One Moment in Time is also a deserved crowd-pleaser.

Elsewhere musical director Howard Gray’s soundtrack selection, underscoring and driving the plot, includes Take That, Queen, Elton John, B*Witched, the Jacksons and The Proclaimers, all performed with harmonic gusto by the ensemble cast, a sparkly Emma-Grace Arends on vocals and the band which flanks Ellie Light’s rotating multi-scene set.

Each year, subconsciously I find myself judging the Court’s Christmas offering against The Scouse Nativity which remains the greatest seasonal story it's ever told.

And while The Scouse Red Riding Hood perhaps doesn’t have quite Nativity's depth of inventiveness and sheer number of memorable moments, it’s certainly an enjoyably cheery, cheeky and colourful way to get into the Christmas spirit.