Raac and the Beanstalk: town pantos forced to move as theatres shut by crumbling concrete

Venues across the UK closed over building safety fears sprinkle a little magic to keep their shows on the road

Every good pantomime needs a menacing villain to threaten all the fun, and this season the theatrical baddie is easy to identify. Christmas shows the length of Britain are battling a foe that could well be dubbed “King Raac”, as the discovery of faulty concrete brings down the curtain at a string of venues.

Pantomimes, crucial box office earners for provincial theatres, have been widely jeopardised, with auditoriums deemed unsafe from Motherwell, Carlisle and Cardiff, to Peterborough, Dartford and Redhill, after the detection of seams of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, known as Raac.