Published: 29 December, 2011
by JOSH LOEB

The Charles Court Opera have built a reputation as one of the best-value tickets in town in the five or so years since the company was formed.

Their Gilbert and Sullivan productions (they put on at least one a year at the King’s Head Theatre or the Rosemary Branch) have in recent years been joined by an annual “boutique” panto, a riot of double entendre, melodram­atic singing and sublimely funny dance routines to rival anything in the West End.

This year’s, Beowulf – The Panto! at the Rosemary Branch Theatre, offers a hilarious take on the epic Anglo-Saxon poem. It comes in both regular and “adults only” form. I chose to see the latter and was in stitches.

All the cast are great but there are standout deliveries from Philip Lee, a great comic performer, as the monster Grendel, and John Savournin, who also directs the show, as Grendel’s mother.

The superb Simon Masterton-Smith is wonderful as inebriated King Hrothgar.

One of the best you  are likely to see this Christmas, if not all year.

• Rosemary Branch Theatre, 2 Shepperton Road, N1 3DT, until January  8, 020 7704 6665, www.rosemarybranch.co.uk