Not one of Wild Rice's best

BY now, going to the Wild Rice's year-end pantomime has become an annual ritual not just among theatre lovers but also many families. Typically, Wild Rice takes a well-loved fairy tale and rewrites it with a local setting, politically incorrect jokes and gender-bending characters.

Unfortunately, not all pantomimes are created equal. And this year's Jack & the Bean-Sprout suffers from a somewhat draggy script and some half-baked jokes.

If not for the presence of a few strong comic actors, who miraculously turn passable jokes into good ones, the eye-popping production design and Ivan Heng's directorial embellishments, this Jack could have been a humdrum affair.