Sleeping Beauty

The panto of Sleeping Beauty from Nunthorpe Players was performed on their stage of a fixed set of beautifully painted stone castle, bright colourful costumes, the usual components of a panto, with an enthusiastic cast who were accompanied by a live 4 piece band, all coming together to provide a witty and entertaining show.  The home-grown script was cleverly written by Liz Taylorson and Catherine Turnbull who also brought it to life with her 3rd time of directing, of a larger cast and wide age range that was a worthy watch. 

The opening scene was nicely created as the introduction to the story with a pictorial dramatization of the family story as the story was told by the good fairy “Briar” to the village children, leading us into the baby Aurora’s christening party where the story begins. The battle of good and bad witches was the story between “Briar” The Fairy Godmother, played by Sarah O’Shea with lovely singing voice and warm character with her rhyming prose, and the evil fairy “Belladonna”, played by Tina Walsh who had nice characterisation, good energy and enhanced by coloured lighting effects. Both fairies had their 2 apprentices; the two good “Bluebell” (Sophie Mitchell) and “Buttercup”, (Dot Buttery) learning to do good and rhyming spells were very good characters and energetic in their portrayals, while the two evil apprentices “Bracken” (Eve Smith) and “Bindweed” (Erica Shanks-Davidson) had lovely evil mannerisms and very effective in character; all four singing and moving well.  The King was well played by Lee Blake giving a soft soppy character and his efficient and bossy Queen played by Kate Dawson.  The “Princess Aurora” once grown up was portrayed by Abby Dennison beautifully played, with lovely characterisation and singing voice. Her love “Prince Perceval” was played by Isaac Moore who had great characterisation and good rapport with his facial expressions to the audience, and their duet together was beautifully performed. Dame of the panto was “Nanny McBobbins” played by Lee Rogers the servant who brings up Princess Aurora, with her many outrageous costumes and comedy antics, played in his usual style.  Aurora’s friend growing up together was the lovely Bert, the gardener’s son, in love with but blanked by Aurora, who was very well played by Daniel Taylorson giving beautiful character, gaining responses from the audience on his entrances and complete with his own growing rose plant that was very effective! He too had a suitor Annie, the lowly maid, nicely played by Katie Legg, who stands by him when the times comes to sleep and so both grow old together. The pair are then aged in the second half and played by Peter Johnson and Ruth Johnson they became the comedy duo, with great characterisations as the aged duo.  Terry Bytheway played the cameo Master of Ceremonies servant with lovely acting and character, Karena Coxon played the Prince’s Valet, and Vicky French his Cook who both had good characters as they followed him in his quests. The 6 castle maids gave the dancing chorus, whilst the remaining chorus members joined to give full cast scenes, with all ages on stage, for scenes that were colourful and fully of life with dancing moves added and lovely tone and volume. The piece that stole the show had to be the dancing flower fairy putting all to sleep with the cutest ballet solo. Well done young miss Holly Turnbull.  Songs added were varied in style and age and performed well in the whole, Big Spender was a good comedy number, romantic expressive duets form Aurora and Percival, and duet from Bert and Annie, full cast “Song of Friends” was warm and well sung, and the singing competition “Happy Birthday” involved audience kids on stage.

It was nice to see new cast members as well as the usual faces and the cast gave their all with their enjoyment easily seen, allowing the audience to enjoy it all the more. 

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