Christmas tradition: Ellie Dadd (centre) is the big-name TV star at Croydon’s Beauty and the Beast panto this year
Christmas 2025 has Beauty and the Beast as the seasonal pantomime at the Fairfield Halls. And Beauty and the Beast is also on at the Churchill Theatre, just a short bus ride away in Bromley.
Oh yes it is!
KEN TOWL has seen both, and here delivers the Inside Croydon verdict on the family show to see
“It’s behind you!” they shouted at the Fairfield Halls.
“It’s behind you!” they shouted at the Churchill Theatre in Bromley.
I thought my panto-going days were, like the ghosts behind the dames on stage, behind me, too, but Inside Croydon had had other ideas.
“This year,” said the editor, “the Fairfield Halls has chosen Beauty and the Beast for their pantomime. Meanwhile, the Churchill has gone for…”
“Oh no, they’ve not?” I asked, incredulous.
“Oh yes they have!”
So I was dispatched to see both, to sit among the screaming hordes, and their children, and make notes.
Of these productions of the same(ish) traditional tale, being staged just a few miles apart in south London, which would be the beauty? And, ominously, which would be the beast?
Hi De Hi!: Su Pollard as Mrs Potty (centre) on stage in Bromley with co-stars Sheri Linehan as Belle (left) and Dame Betty Bouffant, played by Ben Stock
I took my seat in the Ashcroft Theatre and perused my programme. I was about to see, it claimed, “West End-calibre production values”. I was about to be enthralled by “laughter, romance and wonder”.
I was about to see stars.
EastEnder: Ellie Dadd, star of the show in Croydon
The brightest of these was Ellie Dadd who, though not a household name in the Towl household, is a star of stage and screen in that she plays Amy, one of the extended Mitchell family from the popular primetime BBC soap EastEnders.
In Croydon, Dadd plays Belle, the titular Beauty. The title roles, however, are not the lead roles in the panto version of La Belle et la Bete. Those jobs are carried out by the fairy (good or bad), the dame, and the comic, and to some extent the baddie, the ones who break down the fourth wall and interact with the audience in a way that reflects a pre-television age.
Thus, much of the weight of the Fairfield production is carried by Jamie Steen as Polly La Plonk, Charlie Guest as her son, Louis La Plonk, Sorelle Marsh as Fairy Bon Bon and, to some extent, Will Haswell as Hugo Pompidou.
A couple of days later, I slipped into seat G20 in the Churchill Theatre and took a look at the programme as the audience filtered in. As I looked around me, I noticed a much higher incidence of wine-drinking in Bromley compared to Croydon, a culture of bringing glasses into the auditorium which may explain why the audience participation was more raucous at the Churchill.
In terms of celebrity, too, Bromley could shout the louder: First, the pivotal role of the fairy – here styled “the Enchantress” – was played by Samantha Womack, , also known as Ronnie, one of the extended Mitchell family from the popular primetime BBC soap EastEnders.
EasterEnder: Samantha Womack, star of the show in Bromley
Bromley could also boast another TV star, Hi De Hi’s Peggy Ollerenshaw, actress Su Pollard, a veteran of 50 panto seasons, a celebrity so celebrated that she could play herself in a Benidorm Christmas special.
Pollard really is panto royalty, as demonstrated by her appearance at this year’s Royal Variety Performance.
In Bromley, Pollard has taken on the role of Mrs “I’m your fabulous” Potty, a non-canonical role which served to divert a lot of comic lines and plot-driving away from the less well-known Ben Stock, star of the stage but not so much screen, who plays Dame Betty Bouffant.
So, how did Croydon and Bromley Beauty and the Beasts compare?
Both productions felt big and ambitious. They were both loud and brash and in-your-face and as colourful as a box of the sort of chocolates you get a lot of at Christmas, and in both there was enough talent among the cast to carry it all off.
Both made reference to the “six-seven” craze and both made Trump/fart jokes.
One interesting difference was the setting. In Croydon, we were transported to the “land of the Brie” by Fairy “I’m not what you’d call a cross-channel fairy” Bon Bon. The first big cheesy musical number was “Camembert (it’s not Albert Square)”.
National coverage: Bromley’s panto production could not afford the publicity magnet that is panto royalty Su Pollard, as this feature in The i Paper demonstrates
The Bromley production, meanwhile, was set rather more patriotically in, of all places, Bromley, allowing Jamie Leahey’s Silly Billy to riff on how awful Croydon is, and then, just so they didn’t feel left out, how awful Chislehurst and Orpington are as well. “Boo!” shouted the audience in one voice when Croydon was mentioned.
The audience responded warmly to the opening song’s exhortation to “Let’s all stay forever, Bromley all together”.
It sounded better than “This is Croydon – and you’re welcome!”
Leaning further into the Gallic origins of the fairy tale, Croydon’s Polly La Plonk made her first appearance dressed in a tricolour and, leaning harder – very hard indeed – into the pantomime tradition of double entendre, pushed the boundaries of taste from the beginning. Comments like, “She thought Screw-Fix was a dating agency”, and “My mother has a Whistler”, were accompanied by suggestive tongue-play that went beyond the requisite nudge and wink and took us into the realm of single entendre.
Single entendre: Jamie Steen, as Polly La Plonk, the Fairfield panto dame (left) and Charlie Guest (playing Louis La Plonk) keep the show anchored in tradition
Credit to Jamie Steen, though. In a production that is normally light on plot, his diverting performance did a lot of the heavy-lifting. There ain’t nothing like a dame who earns her pay-packet.
Over in Bromley, Ben Stock’s Dame Betty Bouffant, meanwhile, was a lesser and less lascivious presence. Her sharp tongue remained inside her cheek and her first fanny joke was left very much to the audience’s imagination. It would have been nice to have seen more of her (oo-er, missus!), but instead, we got to see a lot of potty Su Pollard who greeted us, of course with the call-and-response classic “Hi-de-Hi!”
She played the entire role with a pink teapot on her head and appeared to be channelling the delivery technique of Count Arthur Strong. Maybe it’s the other way round. Maybe Count Arthur Strong’s delivery is based on Su Pollard. Veteran that she is, Pollard kept the show rolling along and managed to keep to a fine line, entertaining children and adults alike.
Her “In the gap” routine was predictable but still very amusing. The old ones are often the best – just ask Su Pollard! She shared the faster-and-faster joke song “If I were not in Pantomime…” with Womack, Leahey and Stock, and it made a great finale to the production.
And what of Womack? Dressed in black, she played a bad, bad cynical fairy, the darker iteration of Sorelle Marsh’s goody-goody Bon Bon. Like Marsh, Womack had some of the best lines, the knowing, cutting asides that said, “I am too good for all this nonsense but somebody has to be here to explain what is going on.”
Fairy tale ending: Sheri Lineham is Bromley’s Belle with Josh Brown as the Beast
Just as Fairy Bon Bon made reference to Stockholm Syndrome to explain away Beauty’s love for the Beast, so the Enchantress had motive for turning the Prince of Bromley into a Beast after his rejection of her when she had appeared to him as an ugly crone.
True beauty, we came to learn in both productions, is found within.
As for the baddies, in the Croydon corner, we had Will Haswell as the most arrogant Frenchman in town (“and that’s saying something!”) Hugo Pompidou. Playing the role as a not-quite-charming seducteur, Haswell was the sort of man your mother warned you about.
In Bromley, Tom Mussell’s malevolent sword-waving Flash Harry gave off the sort of vibes you would get from the kind of man the police warn you about. Both performed their “Oh yes I will/Oh no you won’t” roles with aplomb, judging by the voluminous boos and hisses they drew from the respective auditoriums.
In Croydon and in Bromley, the supporting cast added a layer of song-and-dance professionalism to the show. The big numbers in both shows were quite stunning, a feast for eyes and ears. The songs at the Fairfield were better, and the singing stronger and clearer, though that might well be a matter of acoustics rather than vocal prowess.
If Croydon edged it on the singing, it had nothing to compare with Leahey’s accomplished ventriloquism act or the traditional comic routines at Bromley. If Croydon was a bit cruder, ruder and more modern, Bromley was more traditional and varied, and about 50 minutes shorter (I’ll leave you to decide whether that is a good or bad thing).
If you fancy a family day out away from the mobile phones and the cares of the real world, go to either. Or both! You’ll enjoy it.
Oh yes you will!
- Ken Towl attended the Croydon and Bromley pantomimes courtesy of the management companies operating the Fairfield Halls and Churchill Theatre.
- Beauty and the Beast at the Fairfield Halls runs until Sunday, January 4. Tickets are available and can be booked by clicking here
- There are tickets available for Beauty and the Beast at Bromley’s Churchill Theatre for the run through to Sunday January 4. Book by clicking here
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