Sleeping Beauty

Now here we had a young director tackling his first pantomime as Director and this was an opening night! His considerable and varied experience was, perhaps a tad constrained by, in my view, an uninspiring script, which did not allow the full scope for the talents of the cast he had at his disposal… I do find that this title is not one to get too excited about anyway, but it is almost essential today to ‘update’ some of the tired dialogue and introduce some modern and topical references!

That said, the musical numbers were a real highlight, and the show opened with a strong energetic ensemble and dancers showing considerable style in the lively ‘Footloose’ number. This was followed by the always effervescent Billy (Paul Woodhouse), who really exuded personality and a penchant for audience involvement, and was a strong favourite with the younger audience members. Good to see several younger faces ‘learning the trade’!

We were amused as the Dame, Queen Dotty (Ben Francis), entered on a seasonally decorated mobility scooter, and immediately gained the attention of the audience. The problem was that this strong opening, and obvious Dame experience, was not really able to be followed up as the script does not offer a strong involvement from the Dame in this Panto ! As a Dame he made the most of his limited interventions with flamboyant costumes, and he clearly had more to give! King Norbert (Gary Davidson) was a strong ideal foil to Dotty and was happy to play second fiddle, even in the very messy ‘slap stick’ baking scene! (mostly for the ‘kids!’)… Poor Geoffrey even got a custard pie!

Now it is not often that a very strong ‘baddy’, the evil Witch Carabosse (Laura Marvell-James), is upstaged by her entrance effect…the steam ‘whoosh‘ machine, as it made such a noise that it drained out the well earned boos and hisses from the audience! However she more than made up for this with an imposing performance which really oozed evil intent. As did her equally obnoxious dancing, ‘talking’ and singing Cat Spindleshanks  (Maisy Jessop), a really strong duo who dominated the good versus evil theme. The opening vocals for Act 2, ‘I Put A Spell On You’ and ‘Monster Mash’, also showed the vocal prowess of this pair.  Fairy Peaceful (Laura Jude) was seemingly a trifle over awed by the power of the ‘opposition’ but, with her colourful Fairy attendants, managed to nullify the extreme spell, converting it to the immortal ‘long sleep’ for the whole Royal household. To assist her character I felt she needed to restore her White witches style hat, as depicted on the programme cover! Her entrances were well enough covered by a less distracting, entrance firework effect, and her White Cat Kitty (Rebecca Ludman) who, although only eleven years old, made an agile characterisation full of expression, despite not having the advantage of baddy Cat Spindleshanks ability to speak! They were a large part of the action and certainly commanded the attention of young audience members especially in their confrontation in the Village and the rousing ‘Oom-Pah-Pah’ number. Juniors were great in this number!

Not to ignore the key characters in this panto, even though there was a 100 years sleep between the action… We had Princess Aurora (ClaraBelle Whitehead) she was the almost too innocent victim of the wicked Carabosse, as she succumbed to the spell and pricked her finger as predicted! Hers was a confident and endearing characterisation as she was eventually ‘rescued’ with a kiss in a rather unremarkable re-awakening scene by Prince Orlando, who throughout showed an excellent stage presence and had the necessary style which will lead to a fruitful  panto career as he develops his skills.

Big well done to the dancers and ensemble who added energy and vitality to the company numbers, accompanied by an effective musical duo in ‘the pit’.  Audiences will enjoy it!

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