2025’s pantomime!

Laugh your stockings off to this profoundly silly and staggeringly naughty new adults-only pantomime, from the award-winning, winter-warming He's Behind You!

By Jon Bradfield & Martin Hooper with songs by Jon Bradfield.
Directed by Andrew Beckett.

He might be a beast but his castle is to die for!

Award-winning adult-panto queens He’s Behind You! return with a ridiculous new version of the 18th greatest love story ever told. Be our guest in the frostbitten Scottish village of Lickmanochers where inexperienced mummy’s boy Bertie becomes the prisoner of an aristocratic brute with lustrous body hair and a castle that's just begging for a makeover. As the snow falls, it's not just the tension that rises...

Starring the best dame in town Matthew Baldwin (“sublime” - Guardian; “wonderful” - Time Out) and packed with big laughs, daft frocks, hilarious songs and all the panto trimmings, don’t miss London’s top festive night out. It’s fabulous fun - just NOT for all the family.   

Past Show Highlights

Ticket Info

Booking 1-14 tickets? You can book your directly with Charing Cross Theatre here!

Want to book a group to see the show? You can book 15+ tickets here and receive 10% off the cost of your tickets?

Have a group of more than 20? Get 15% off and the booker goes free! Just click the link below to email us, or call the Box Office number below

Call Charing Cross Box Office:
08444 930 650
(Phone lines open 16:00 - 20:00, Monday to Saturday).

Creative Team

  • Andrew Beckett was Associate and then Artistic Director at Above The Stag Theatre, helming a string of hits including nine pantomimes, an award-winning production of Grindr: The Opera (Best New Musical, Off West End Awards) and a revival of Jonathan Harvey’s Boom Bang-A-Bang. At Theatre Royal Windsor he directed Handbagged, Dial M for Murder, Relatively Speaking and Joking Apart, and he has directed classic plays of all genres for Paul Taylor Mills’ rep seasons in Sidmouth.

Director

  • Jon’s award-winning play Animal, developed with disability activist Josh Hepple, was produced in 2023 by the Park Theatre, London and Manchester’s Hope Mill Theatre. With Martin Hooper, Jon wrote Sleeping Beauty Takes A Prick (He’s Behind You! at Charing Cross Theatre); 12 pantomimes for Above The Stag Theatre including Mother Goose Cracks One Out and Dick Whittington: A New Dick in Town, and since 2014 has written original songs for the shows. Also with Martin: Ghosted: Another Fucking Christmas Carol (The Other Palace); He Shoots! He Scores! and Get Em Off! (Above The Stag); and A Hard Rain (Above The Stag and, separately, Theater for the New City, New York). For television Jon wrote Missing Alice, an episode of Mark Gatiss’ Queers anthology series for BBC4, starring Rebecca Front as Alice, also performed live at the Old Vic Theatre; and the TV movie Romantic Friction. The scripts for Animal, A Hard Rain and Queers are available from Nick Hern Books. He’s Behind You! 11 Eleven Gay Pantomimes is available from Amazon and to order from Gays The Word and other bookshops.

Writer and Composer

Writer

  • Marin Hooper’s pantomimes include Sleeping Beauty Takes A Prick (He’s Behind You! at Charing Cross Theatre) and for Above The Stag: Dick Whittington: A New Dick In Town; Pinocchio: No Strings Attached; Mother Goose Cracks One Out; Sleeping Beauty: Rotten to the Core; Beauty on the Piste; Tinderella: Cinders Slips it In; Treasure Island: The Curse of the Pearl Necklace; Jack Off The Beanstalk; Get Aladdin; Sleeping Beauty: One Little Prick; Robin Hood: Queen of Thieves; and Dick Whittington: Another Dick in City Hall. They also co-wrote the musicals He Shoots! He Scores! and Get Em Off (Above The Stag) and the play A Hard Rain (Above The Stag and, separately, Theater for the New City, New York). 11 of the pantomime scripts are available in the book He’s Behind You! 11 Gay Pantomimes.

Producer

  • He’s Behind You was founded to bring alternative, adult pantomime into the West End. It is a collaboration between the creative team behind London’s best-loved adult pantomime series and producer Oli Sones. Oli has produced A Chorus Line at the London Palladium; Wasted at the Southwark Playhouse; 46 Beacon at The Hope Theatre and Trafalgar Studios; Another America and Dark Tourism at the Park Theatre. He was associate producer on Taken at Midnight at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. He has produced major musicals in Singapore, Malaysia, Monaco, Tel Aviv and Slovenia and the international tour of Joan Collins Unscripted. He has produced cabaret shows in London and New York.

Designer

  • David has designed the sets and costumes for plays, musicals and other spectacles at venues of every scale from international arena tours to studio theatres via prominent international and regional producing houses and the West End.


    Some of his many credits include:


    Strictly Come Dancing the Professionals (Original UK tour); Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway on Tour (UK Arena production directed by Anthony Van Laast). Associate designer on The Last Five Years (The Other Palace, directed by Jason Robert Brown); End of the Rainbow, Little Shop Of Horrors and Our House (National Tours); Hair in Concert (London Palladium); Pippin (Charing Cross Theatre); Heathers The Musical (Theatre Royal Haymarket, National tours and The Other Palace London); The Pleasure Garden (Offie 2021 Award winner, Best set design); Closer to Heaven (Turbine Theatre); Ruddigore (Wilton’s Music Hall); Rose, starring Dame Maureen Lipman (Ambassadors Theatre, London); Snow White (UK Pantomime Association Award Winner best set design 2024, Wolverhampton Grand Theatre); The Fabulist (Charing Cross theatre); Su Pollard - Still Fully Charged (UK tour) and I Wish You Well (Criterion).

Costume Designer

  • Robert Draper started his professional theatre career at the tender age of 11 in the child chorus of “Evita”. Having caught the ‘theatre bug’; he then trained at Middlesex University and went on to perform in various pantomimes and musicals. 

    His panto experience has seen Robert perform in practically every role, from chorus boy, through principal boy to Baddie and even Dame!  Alongside his theatre performances Robert also spent 15 years performing cabaret in pubs and clubs around the UK and abroad.

    Robert trod the boards for over 25 years before deciding that it was time for a change and he moved backstage. He’d always had a passion for costume and during his performing career was often to be found in the costume department, helping out and generally getting in the way!

    These days Robert works in the costume department across TV, Film (Call the Midwife, Peterloo, Downton Abbey, Scoop, Us, Roadkill) and Theatre (Thoroughly Modern Millie national tour, Officer and Gentleman - the Musical national tour). 

    Robert has created costumes for various pantomimes, including many at the ‘Above the Stag’ theatre and he is thrilled to be working with the same creative team once again, especially as designing and making Matthew Baldwin’s Dame outfits is one of his utmost pleasures! Oh yes it is….!

Musical Director and Orchestrator

  • Aaron has received eleven Off-West End Award Nominations, a Standing Ovation Award Nomination and a Broadway World Award Nomination for his work as a Musical Director.

    Favourite credits as Musical Director include: Into the Woods (The Cockpit);  Marry Me a Little and The Story Of My Life (Stage Door Theatre); Betty Blue Eyes (Union Theatre); Romance Romance, [title of show] and Grindr The Opera (Above The Stag Theatre); Metropolis, The Kissing Dance, Wonderful Town and A Little Night Music (Ye Olde Rose and Crown Theatre); Faking Bad and Closer To Heaven (Turbine Theatre); Sleeping Beauty (Charing Cross Theatre); My Land’s Shore (Theatr Soar); It’s a Bird...It’s A Plane...It’s Superman (Leicester Square Theatre); The Ripper’s Five (Theatro Technis); Naked Boys Singing (King’s Head Theatre and Garden Theatre); Sondheim by Sondheim (Roundhouse); Next Thing You Know (Garden Theatre); Dorian the Musical (Southwark Playhouse and The Other Palace); Soho Boy, (Drayton Arms Theatre) and Cinderella (White Rock Theatre).

    Credits as Orchestrator: include: Romance Romance, Grindr The Opera, Metropolis, Into The Woods, A LittleNight Music, 110 In The Shade, and My Land’s Shore.


    Cabaret credits include: Mountains – A Musical Journey (St. James Studio and Jermyn Street Theatre); Don’t Ask the Lady! and Dorothy and Friends (Crazy Coqs); The Stephen Sondheim Society Presents (Phoenix Artists Club);  and Tim McArthur and Friends (Hippodrome Casino).


    Recording credits include: Grindr The Opera and The Pleasure Garden (Jay Records).

Choregrapher

Lighting Designer

Sound Designer

Reviews

Critics Choice: Top 10 UK pantomimes - The Stage

★★★★★
“Easily the best adult pantomime in London”

— Theatre Weekly

★★★★★
“I don’t think I have laughed so much in a theatre, ever. If you only see one panto this year, make sure it’s this”

— Box Office Radio

★★★★
“A terrifically entertaining evening. Delightfully daft”

— Gay Times

★★★★
“A filthy, festive delight. Joyous queerness. Outstanding”

— All That Dazzles