With The Three Little Pigs we are back to the panto approach to children’s shows with jokes for young and old, including lavatory humour with a character called Toi Lett, who is Red Riding Hood’s mother!

The cool, athletic wolf Hugh Mungus (George Harach) is after Granny and the three homeless pigs (make-up and costumes excellent). Pancetta (Johanna Cosgrove), Ham (Frith Horan), and Chop (Shaun Martin) have twirly tails and Pancetta finds her way about the forest with a GPS.

A surprising lot is crammed into this 40-minute long show. Nothing goes on too long though there is one song and dance number with the three pigs that is longer than most and just as well as it contains a scene-stealing funny turn by Shaun Martin as the slightly dim, custard-loving Chop who is always a beat and a movement or two behind the other two.
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Toilet humour – always a favourite with kids – gets an early outing when real estate agent Toivana (call me Toi) Lett introduces the show. It turns out Toi (Robert Bullen) is the mother of Red Riding Hood and therefore the daughter of RRH’s Granny. What’s that got to do with the Three Little Pigs’ story? Well the Wolf (George Harach) is the common denominator.

Their Pigs’ (or rather the straw and stick ones) have already been blown down before the show starts. That’s why Pancetta (Johanna Cosgrove), Ham (Frith Horan) and Chop (Shaun Martin) have come to Toi – cue song: ‘Pigs Just Wanna Have Homes’. And the new house Toi is offering is her mother’s because Granny is being relocated to Bedsores Manor …

Robert Hickey’s script is light and amusing, as far as it goes, but in the end it lacks dramatic purpose; it just ends when it turns out the Wolf hasn’t eaten Granny after all because she’s fed him the contents of her fridge before moving out. Any sense of a quest – i.e. to get a new home – just disappears as the medium becomes the message.

The cast acquit themselves well. Cosgrove, Horan and Martin are well delineated with Martin offering excellent comedy, not least with his passion for custard. Harach is a wacky Wolf with a mean talent for hip-hop (as per his Aladdin last holidays) and Bullen is nicely low key in drag.

Director Rodney Bane has paced the action well and Frith Horan has choreographed the songs in a lively way – although climaxing the show with a wordless dance does add to the story’s over-all lack of purpose.

Good children’s theatre experiences can be rich, memorable and stimulating. The Three Little Pigs and a Really Cool Wolf, on the other hand, is a light-weight holiday time-filler.
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