The dick jokes are, of course, inevitable but that does not lessen the puerile delight when they start to land. “Let’s see who loves Dick down in the bottom,” says an irrepressible Adam McCoy in the title role as he builds a rapport with the audience.
His full name is Dick Head. Those from north Wales will be pleased his mother, played by the formidable Lindzi Germain, is called Holly Head. From their home in the suburb of Garston, they set out on a journey to make Dick the mayor of Liverpool, where the streets are paved with chewing gum.
In this exuberant entertainment, writer Kevin Fearon is not overly concerned with panto tradition. There is no cross-dressing, no “he’s behind you” and not even any clear signals about when to boo Andrew Schofield’s very funny King Rat.
Nor is there much resembling the standard Dick Whittington story. In this version, Liam Tobin’s suave mayor resigns after all the cats in the city have been murdered. In order to take his place, Dick has to go on an international quest to retrieve his hidden treasure, pursued by King Rat armed with a discombobulator storm generator. For a show aimed at adults, it is enjoyably daft.
But under the direction of Mark Chatterton, a two-decade veteran of the rock’n’roll pantos up the road at the Everyman, The Scouse Dick Whittington is less about cheap gags and wayward plots than about music. With an excellent four-piece band on stage and tremendous vocal performances by the whole ensemble, notably Hayley Sheen as Alice, the show powers through pop, rock and soul favourites from Livin’ on a Prayer to Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat. The cake-making scene alone clocks up a dozen songs.
Things get surreal when Dick’s arrival in Austria is the cue for a send-up of Ultravox’s Vienna video, complete with horse, which morphs into Falco’s Rock Me Amadeus, all extravagant wigs and silly accents, and then Kraftwerk’s The Model, with Schofield in straight black tie and spangly red shirt. The restraint of the advent-calendar set by designer Olivia du Monceau is offset by the flamboyance of her costumes in a joyful show driven by abrasive humour and musical sparkle.
