Stage review Rowe and his fabulous frocks reign supreme

One day, a panto may come along in which the story is given as much (OK, even half as much) attention as the dame's frocks, and where the romance between the principal boy and his sweetheart isn't as flat as the backcloth. Hackney's Dick Whittington is not that panto. Nope, this is the one wot Clive Rowe is in, the one wot London's most celebrated dame now conceives and directs, indeed.

- Brian Logan

Rowe is the king/queen of all he surveys here, lording it over rat-infested London, a ship on the high seas and then - for no apparent reason - a desert island populated by moneyed beatniks. (You expect pop songs in a panto; blissed-out Beatles album track Sun King, not so much.) That's all quite sufficient to keep this panto ship afloat, notwithstanding the best efforts of Graham MacDuff's ZZ Top-alike King Rat to sink our heroes five fathoms deep in act two. There's lively crowd work, with Rowe tormenting a ha