Review: Adam Riches as Sean Bean in The 12 Beans of Christmas (13.12.2025)

Channeling an entrance pitched somewhere between Chris Farley's legendary appearance on the David Letterman show, and Alan Partridge's Knowing Me, Knowing You, Adam Riches (or Sean Bean) storms the stage of this intimate venue and immediately unleashes chaos upon the auditorium, the climax coming as he puts the reindeer he rides in on to the sword.

In truth, the chaos never lets up at any point, as Riches/Bean guides us through a series of ridiculous games, each involving members of the audience which has been split into two teams - Team Sean and Team Bean.

To put some kind of daftness scale on these games, one of them is called Trebuchet, and involves Riches being deployed as the medieval catapult to project a grape from his cream-filled mouth at a helmeted contestant!

It's silly to the extreme but hilarious fun, and after the performance concludes with an audience singalong to a bastardised (emphasis on the bastard) version of the Twelve Days of Christmas - Twelve Seans-a-dying right through to a kestrel with a bad knee - it leaves you wondering what on earth just happened when the hour long show is over.

If you're not a fan of panto, or even if you are, this provides an incredibly funny and adult alternative to the standard festive fare served up elsewhere. The 12 Beans of Christmas tours until 19 Dec, concluding at the Cambridge Junction.