Sleeping Beauty

This was my first trip to see the Panto people. It was immediately clear to as I arrived at the Regal Theatre that from the sense of anticipation and excitement – this  Group is well-loved jewel in the crown of the town and boy have they earned the accolade!!

Directed by Darcy-Mae Ahern, this was a celebration of a lovely fairy story, magical, hilarious and imaginative. As well as a background in dance, Darcy-Mae has an eye for detail and she, along with her creative team, added loads of inventive and original touches.

As the show opened, the music included an excerpt of the Sleeping Beauty Waltz which was a lovely touch and, with a little blast of piro, we meet fairy Lilac and Bad Witch Hazel who fill us in on the story.

As the music from the talented 7-piece band swelled, villagers appeared from all corners of the theatre to  stun the audience with an ensemble version of Come Alive with a great dance routine and rousing vocals. Every inhabitant of the stage performed precision and smiles, it was a perfect opening.

The costumes were vibrant and gorgeous, perfectly enhancing the characters, I really enjoyed the regal royal outfits, the magical Lilac and Nurse Hettie Harpic’s crazy costumes, the evil Hazel and her deliciously despicable sidekick, Eyegore the gorgeous Rainbow Fairies and especially the incredible wigs made by the producer herself – these were works of art - superb and really effective and must have had the added bonus of being considerably easier to wear than traditional ones.
 
The set was very nicely constructed and there were a lot of imaginative touches from screen which tracked the entrance of the Dame to the rotating and revealing tower. It was clear a huge amount of work had been put in by the team.

Having met the Royal Couple who had all the parenting skills of a distant Victorian relative, a great moment was the entrance of Nurse Hettie Harpic – a screen appeared on stage and we were treated to watching her progress through Minehead as she picks up various items of shopping before we see her swing through the doors on her scooter, it was brilliantly done and the audience loved it – what an entrance.

There were some lovely performances, Muddles the palace handymen was full of energy and was a great character for the hugely funny Hettie Harpic to play off.  Bad Witch Hazel was fabulously evil and relished every wicked line, practically daring the audience to boo. Her vocals were lovely and her even crueller sidekick Eyegore provided a lot of humour with his gravelly voice and antics – this was a great performance. I really liked the spell concocting scene. The moment when Hazel’s power of evil finally deserted her was lovely.
King Cactus and Queen Marigold were great performers, they made totally inept parenting very funny and of course provided many comic moments with Nurse Hettie.
Hettie, nursemaid to Princess Rose and the village school mistress was a great character who interacted brilliantly with the audience particularly as she flirted with one or two of the men.
I particularly enjoyed Fetch and Carrie, palace messengers: they were a comic duo. They worked well together and since they were responsible for delivering invitations to the party, both actors demonstrated not only great teamwork and comic timing, but incredibly good memories as they read out address after address with follow up jokes to each – brilliant!

Fairy Lilac was charming and sang beautifully – her need to check spells on her spell-checker was lovely and her wonderful Rainbow Fairies were adorable and provided many awwww moments. Each handled their role very well and sang and danced beautifully.

Rose was a lovely character, her vocals were lovely and the actress made the character very much her own.  She looked the part and interacted well with the Prince in both his guises, moved and sang well and had the lovely duet with the Prince. Prince Alexis/Alexander was a complex role as Alexander was the great grandson of Alexis.  This was a confident performance with good stage presence – both Alexis and Rose had lovely singing voices and were a pleasure to watch.

In all, it was a pleasure to see this vibrant, energetic team add their own particular brand of Panto People magic to this show and the result was enchanting – Congratulations guys!!

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