Sleeping With Beauty

I’ve led a very sheltered life, I’ve never before been invited to an Adult Pantomime, and never particularly wanted to see one. All my friends and all my work colleagues will tell you that I never swear so I looked at this with some trepidation. I do enjoy humour and fun as much as anyone so I decided that I would look beyond the language.

This pantomime was loosely based on the story of Sleeping Beauty, Beautiful Princess, Handsome Prince, Queen, Good Fairy, Bad Fairy, Court Jester/Lovelorn ‘suitor’ and Company. All the elements one expects and then some.

This was a small company and a relatively short production, but it crammed a lot in, no programme and no cast list so I can’t say what the songs were but at the time they were appropriate to the ‘storyline’.

All the performances were very good, Kevin Shippey – Queen Labia, is always good as the pantomime Dame and he enjoyed much banter with the audience although as he told me afterwards, he couldn’t understand / hear one particular audience member. He was joined by Owen Angier as Princess A’whora and I would never have recognised him in his costume wig and make-up. Danielle Shippey made an excellent Bad Fairy as Carabitch, whose counterpart – the good fairy, Fairy Hanny was played by Melissa Middleton. Josh Shippey played Prince Albert (I didn’t notice any reference there to a prince albert – missed opportunity? I’ll now be told that there was!). The star of the show, to my mind this time round was Matt Beare as the sparkly, wonderfully energetic Muddles. These principals were ably supported by the forever costume changing Bec Key and Rachel Shepherd.

This was an energetic, wonderfully entertaining production, well performed by all, choreography must have been Danielle’s work, straightforward and well performed considering the short rehearsal time, songs were in time and in tune, the very colourful costumes were well designed to suit each character, dialogue and sound throughout was good and clear.

Despite my initial worries, by looking beyond the language this was an entertaining evening much appreciate by the full audience, plenty of lewd humour but nothing pornographic to upset me or the audience. I actually said to Kevin afterwards that if I had been on the end of a row and picked on, I might have joined in, that is how much I enjoyed the show.

 

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