The Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty is a children’s fairy tale which has been hijacked as a suitable story for pantomime. It isn’t one of the mainstream pantomimes, like Cinderella, or Aladdin but still many versions exist, some good, some not so good. Ben Crocker’s script was entertaining although I found some scenes difficult to equate with either the original fairy tale or its transformation to a pantomime.

Clevedon CC played to a good sized audience who during act 1 did not give much response to the performers (apart from a  few over excited children). This made two way interaction with the audience quite difficult. It was due in part because of the script... no young lad to say ‘Watch my hat’ or ‘look after my rabbit’. I had a problem with ‘the Dame’, not your specific dame, but the dame in the script... was the dame the queen or was the queen the Dame? He appeared to be an undefined mixture of both. In most ‘Sleeping Beauty’s I have seen, the writer introduces a Dame as the nanny to the baby Aurora and this works much better. It enables the King and Queen to be amusing, kind and concerned parents to Aurora and the Queen is not a bizarre caricature. It also enables the Dame to participate in all the pantomime elements that dames do.

The set was good when a castle, but was poor when it came to ‘outside’ the castle. The thorny growth over the castle was poorly represented. Carabosse’s lair and Dreamland were a disappointment. Lighting was adequate and sound was very good. The costumes were very nice, adding terrific colour, they were worn well by all the cast with the ladies of the chorus very elegant.

The musical direction was good, with strong and attractive singing from the ladies in the chorus. The principal singers did their best but nerves and some inexperience got in the way. The band made a good sound and never over powered the performers. The spinning wheel song was an unknown but attractive addition to the rest of the chosen music which mostly complimented the story. Excellent singing came from the company with end song ‘Celebrate’, and this would have made a better and more joyful ending to the walk down than I will walk 500 miles.... a bit of a dirge!

The direction had some excellent moments and some which went a bit off course. The direction of the scene between Carabosse and Spindleshanks... over who would be the old lady at the spinning wheel was so funny and well directed, I laughed out loud. The introduction of the black and white dance routine (although of little relevance to the story), was masterly and very well performed... I venture to suggest the choreographer was involved here and it was very good.

The Thriller scene had no real direction and therefore no life and the nightmare walk around the stage in act 2, which seemed to go on and on, again had no comedy and little entertainment value.

The story of Sleeping Beauty is thin as the performers are asleep for much of the time; therefore excuses have to be made for getting them back into the show. This is a weakness in Sleeping Beauty the pantomime, not a criticism of your production. It is difficult to make the ‘extra scenes’ relevant.

Kitty was excellently performed, she had real stage presence and charisma , her smiles never left her face when helping with the ‘ laboured’ sing a long and children!

The high light of the show  was the pairing of Carabosse and Spindleshanks, fun, good timing, talent and a great sense of what they needed to achieve... to both of you a huge well done.

Just a note... a few stage flashes or effects would have helped the good v bad interaction. The flickering of stage lights was not enough? I guess that could have been a cost or a crew issue... forgive my comments if this is so. This appeared to be a panto on a budget and if this was so, you certainly did the very best you could.

This was a curate’s egg of a pantomime.... good in parts. I have seen Clevedon Comedy Club present other excellent pantomimes and there are better pantomimes than Sleeping Beauty.

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