The 3 Little pigs, theatre review: Hamming it up for the silly season

It’s always unsettling to be bombarded with cries of “It’s behind you!” in early August; “No”, I want to shout, “It’s four months in front”.

Still, we’re in the summer holiday silly season, which means a glut of children’s shows, including this 55-minute offering for nippers of three and up. It’s a new musical from George Stiles and Anthony Drewe, creators of the delightful Honk!, and it has a certain degree of charm, although there’s an inescapably low-rent feel to Drewe’s production.

It doesn’t help that it has been squashed — a bacon sarnie, one might call it — for a matinee run onto the set of The Commitments.

Our three little porkers, with their pink and black hog suits, are a lively bunch: exercise-loving Bar (Taofique Folarin), environmentally conscious Bee (Leanne Jones) and bookish Q (Daniel Buckley).

Booted out from their loving mother’s house (cue the lamenting lyric that “it’s a real pigsty”), they build their new homes out of straw, sticks and bricks respectively, in architectural approaches of Biblical parable proportions.

However the Big Bad Wolf (last year’s Strictly runner-up Simon Webbe) is about to come huffing.

The lyrics have Stiles and Drewe’s customary appeal and there are, of course, porcine puns aplenty; a portable lunch is now a “pignig”.

Yet the constant chatter from the kids around me suggested a certain lack of engagement with the overall concept and I can’t say I disagree with them.

Until September 6 (0844 482 9676)
Book tickets for The 3 Little Pigs with Going Out Tickets

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