SLEEPING BEAUTY

SLEEPING BEAUTY

Chelmsford Ballet Company at the Civic Theatre

17.03.16

Chelmsford Ballet Company have brought an old favourite back to the Civic Stage; Annette Potter's delightful version of the Petipa/Tchaikovsky classic fields a splendid cast, from the tiniest assistant demon to the professional soloist Florimund.
And everyone gets a chance to shine: the Fairy Assistants – acolytes bearing the gifts for Aurora – get their moment in the limelight, as well as their Fairy mistresses. Lovely little solos in the Prologue from these five, including the fluttery Songbird [Darci Willsher] and the dainty Woodland Glade [Alycia Potter].
Scarlett Mann [last year's Pineapple Poll] makes a radiant Princess. In her Rose Adage, she looks delighted to be choosing her suitor; her spirited variation is a typical teenager, showing off despite her mother's misgivings. Her Prince is Andrei Teodor Iliescu, a sympathetic partner, with some impressive fireworks in Act III.
The evil Carabosse – her arrival, like the vines and briars, a video projection – is brilliantly brought to life by an imperious Marion Pettet, sweeping in on her chariot with her black-clad entourage. In the divertissements, splendid work from Puss in Boots and The White Cat [Kieran Papworth and Amelia Wallis] and the agile Bluebird of Morgan Wren.
The costumes are stylish and colourful – maroon and gold for the corps in Act III, confectionery pastels in Act I for the Garland Waltz. This sequence, with floral hoops and posies, just one of the stunning ensembles, showing off this enterprising company at its inclusive best.

SLEEPING BEAUTY

SLEEPING BEAUTY
The Essex Group at Witham Public Hall
20.12.2015

Gary Sullivan's Sleeping Beauty – bringing the shameless excitement of panto to Witham – takes some liberties with the tale, but gives generous opportunities to its performers of all ages. The script revels in some entertaining flights of linguistic fancy and rhyming fun.
The production has a professional feel – flashy merchandise, strong, outgoing performances, slick choreography, impressive pyrotechnics and a hi-tech mirror ball.
And there are some excellent people in the company. Engaging the audience and providing much of the on-stage energy, Josh Handley's lively Jester Jack, a perfect panto performance. A nice foil for the coarse-grained Nanny Sally of writer/director Gary Sullivan. 
Jackie Parry has all the menacing moves for a boo-able Maleficent, another strong characterization. Very promising work from many of the youngsters: George Bedwell as the Squire to Julian Harris's “stunning looking Prince”, Lily Downes as Subservient, sidekick to the Wicked Witch, and Ben Blackborow working incredibly hard as a bumbling aviator, a village idiot, Walnut and Dreyfus the Dragon.
Shona Ekins makes a charming, feisty Fairy Nuff, marshalling her tiny corps de ballet, “representing the whole fairy kingdom”. Nice, confident performances, beautifully costumed. Super frocks for the dancers, too, even for the trees in the “obnoxious forest”. And of course some gorgeous creations for the Dame, including a great super-hero reveal.
The musical numbers are polished and energetic – a Hairspray kick-line, something sweet from Anastasia, and for the happy-ever-after ending, Grease and Walk the Moon. A little more music would have been welcome, and a little less innuendo, perhaps.
Essex Group are back in panto mode next year – nine performances of Puss in Boots for Christmas 2016 – but before then, the ever-popular Oliver!, coming to the Public Hall in April.

SLEEPING BEAUTY

SLEEPING BEAUTY

Cut to the Chase at the Queen's Theatre, Hornchurch

01.12.2014

for The Public Reviews

No end of fun in Hullabaloonia, the setting for this year's spectacular Sleeping Beauty.

Nicholas Pegg's script sticks close to tradition, the jokes and routines are familiar friends, but it's all done with such style and energy that everyone, from the tiniest to the most jaded, is royally entertained.

As we've come to expect, the show is visually stunning - everything designed by Mark Walters: the palace and the title gauze glitter like an illuminated manuscript – the sparkling colours echoed in the glowing swords and flashing fans in the stalls. The frocks, too, are outstanding: not just Nelly's outrageous creations – a nursemaid's titfer, a rampant squirrel, Gaga mirrorballs – but the fairies' wings and the king's uniform. Even the excellent children's chorus get several changes, including toadstool sprites and purple for the wedding walkdown.

The set includes a pneumatic red dragon, a lovely revolving turret for the spindle scene, and a forest of thorns ingeniously sprouting from nowhere. The bedroom scene, complete with moose, ghost, candlesticks and chamberpots, is a triumph of physical gags, carefully orchestrated for maximum comic effect.

The cast, directed by Matt Devitt, bring enthusiasm, and occasional in-jokes, to the familiar story. Rachel Dawson makes a charming young Aurora; Thomas Sutcliffe is her [elegantly dressed] humble kitchen boy Clutterbuck, a dashing, thigh-slapping hero with dimples and a Colgate smile. Their love is thwarted by her dad, King Ethelbert the Unsteady – a fussy, flatulent Fred Broom.

Only fitting that most of the hard work – warming the audience, dusting off old gags – should fall to Sam Pay's Silly Billy, a superbly likeable pantomime performance. And Claire Storey's Carabosse, a cynical American with a touch of Joan Crawford, makes an excellent foil for Megan Leigh Mason's pretty, vivacious Primrose.

Simon Jessop's Dame is bold and brash – much fun is had at the expense of Brad in row D - “hours of humiliation” for him, the climax his conducting of the audience in this year's Panto Song – Meghan Trainor's All About That Bass.

All the other music is fresh from the pen of MD Carol Sloman; this year's vocal gems include a quest anthem to end Act One, Fire in My Shoes for Tom, and a great duet Let's Make Sweet Music for the King and the Dame.

Like the music, the costumes and the set are all made in house. That's what makes the Queen's seasonal offering stand out; it's the Cut to the Chase company letting their hair down over Christmas, in a show that is entirely created on site. A local show, for a loyal audience, but with production values unmatched on the region's repertory stages.

production photograph by Mark Sepple

this piece first appeared on The Public Reviews

SLEEPING BEAUTY

SLEEPING BEAUTY

Made in Colchester at the Mercury Theatre

07.12.13

for The Public Reviews

Among the C-listers and the pop charts, the cruise-ship choreography and the desperate decibels, it's a real pleasure to sit back and enjoy this charmingly original re-working of the Sleeping Beauty story, originally written by Jonathan Petherbridge for London Bubble Theatre, and directed for the Mercury by Tony Casement.

At its best when it holds its alternative nerve, as in the delightful opening, where The Old Woman [Kate Copeland] emerges from her giant portmanteau to look into the future for the childless King and Queen. Elsewhere, it feels a little apologetic, with its talk of critical exposition [“the audience needs to know what's going on”] and the Dame teaching the Fairy how to interact with the audience.

Much of the writing is witty and unusually subtle – way above the heads of the kids - the songs, many of them written for the show by Richard Reeday, the MD, are redolent of the fifties and sixties where the first half of the show is set. “If Life Were Like Ballroom” especially enjoyable. One hundred years later we're into the future [as seen from the 1950s] with robots, saucers and genetically modified Police Dogs.

No shortage of clever twists, either – the fatal needle, for example, is the stylus of a lovely period Dansette.

And it's good to see a new take on some of these familiar fairytale characters. Emma Salvo is a well-meaning trainee fairy [the staff room an excellent piece of set design] longing to get her wings, and David Ahmad is excellent as Davis, the faithful royal retainer. Superb work from Jonny Fines and his quiff as a young Prince Justin [and his distant teenage descendant Ronnie], wooing Stephanie Hockley's Princess Talia with his dance moves.

Slightly out of his/her element as a traditional dame, Neil Bromley's Nanny, with her B-Tech in Projectile Vomiting and her venerable gags. Other familiar features which don't quite fit are the baking scene, which quickly becomes gratuitous water pistol fun, and the interminable Birthday Bingo. At least we are spared inviting children up on stage to talk about what Santa will be bringing …

It's a long way from shouting “It's Behind You!” to remembering a dictionary definition of A Republic, and the audience participation is sometimes tentative. Many of the younger punters prefer the cuddly rabbits, who pop up to steal sandwiches and the all-important calculator.

Like the Noh and the Nativity play, pantomime is a sacred ritual – you mess with it at your peril. Mums and Dads, for their one taste of live theatre in the year, like to bring their kids to discover what they themselves loved as children. But if a new broom is needed, much rather this quirky, intelligently loveable hybrid than a vehicle for an X-factor songster or a second-rate soap star.

production photograph: Robert Day

this piece first appeared on The Public Reviews

SLEEPING BEAUTY

SLEEPING BEAUTY

The Rock 'n' Roll Panto at the New Wolsey, Ipswich

27.11.12

Princess Susie ?

Well, if you're a Rock 'n' Roll Panto, the cue for a song must have been just too hard to resist.

This is the twelfth in the Wolsey's smash-hit series, and, like all good panto houses, it has developed much loved tropes and traditions: the chorus of critters, the lame rhymes, the jokes at the expense of Norwich City, the visual puns ["Baby Bouncer"] and of course the superb actor musicians who play all the instruments and all the familiar roles. With the usual "gratuitous cover versions of golden oldies" – well, they said it …

Diego Pitarch, who's also designed the costumes, has given us a beautiful pop-up storybook set – sparkly clocks a feature, with gothic details and an ingenious alcove upstage. Plenty of room for the musicians, too, and for Ally Holmes's lively choreography.

Good to welcome back Will Kenning back for his third year in the frocks – he's Dame Taffeta Trott this year, bringing his irrepressible energy and sense of the ridiculous to the role, with manic, breathless pace and not a hint of campery.

Springing up through proper stage traps, the two fairy forces for good, Esther Biddle's assertive Fairy Fanciful – a bit like a jolly headmistress – and her apprentice, Frederica, wonderfully characterized by Sarah Mahony, with her youth-speak, her boots and her boater. On the dark side, we have Karen Mann's malevolent Morgana, voice like a buzz-saw, making a spectacular upstage entrance and her spoilt son Mordred, OTT and charmless, he nonetheless gets his own high-energy number to sing – a memorable villain from Steve Simmonds. Michael Paver, blowing his own trumpet, is Harold the Herald, and Sean Kingsley wrings every last drop of character from King Candlesticks Camelot. Vocally impressive, too. Simon Steadfast, our likeable, honest hero is played with considerable charm by Peter Manchester. Lilly Howard is his Susie, looking lovely in her Lulu outfit and singing beautifully, notably in "My Guy".

Like Matthew Bourne's new ballet, this Sleeping Beauty is set in Victorian times; then, after a hundred-year interval, we wake in the Swinging Sixties; cue for some loving recreations by wardrobe [Taffeta's geometric dress] and for plenty of those chart-topping standards, plus one or two wild cards: Under the Moon of Love, brilliantly sold here by Kingsley and Kenning, which might have been totally forgotten were it not for Showaddywaddy ...

Everyone of the ten-strong company has a moment in the limelight – even Domestos/drummer Kieran Bailey, with his farting sink-plunger. The sound effects – another tradition – superb as ever.

"Celebration", "Wake Me Up Before You Go Go", "It's In His Kiss", "I'll Be Watching You", "Brand New Bag", the Dame channelling Chaka Khan, Morgana on glocks, Sprite Frederica on flute, and before we know it we're onto the name checks and the party-mix finale. The audience loved every minute – babes in arms, wolf cubs in the front, Novotel at the back, and good sport Terry in row D.

Sleeping Beauty written by Peter Rowe and directed by Rob Salmon, with Ben Goddard in charge of all that music, is at the Wolsey till almost the end of January, with more than seventy shows still to come for this gloriously unique panto company.

production photos - Mike Kwasniak

SLEEPING BEAUTY

SLEEPING BEAUTY

One From The Heart at the Civic Theatre

04.12.11

Michael Fentiman's Sleeping Beauty was a straight old-school panto, delivered with boundless enthusiasm by a hard-working team. We had a brassy Northern Dame, a pure, demure Princess and a dashing Prince. We had snow, roller skates and flying by Kirby's. And a proper all-singing all-dancing chorus with proper chorus boys.

Richard Peakman's choreography lent life to every number – Wicked's "Keep Dancing Through" could be the slogan here. Boys from Laine Theatre Arts, girls auditioned locally. "Three camp guys and a bunch of dodgy covers" – a harsh verdict on Mike Cotton's Band: even David Saville's Witch Doctor sounded good ...

All the principals went the extra mile to get the audience going. I loved Stephen Carlile's evil drag queen Carabosse, a nice foil for the Scots Fairy Fortune [Melanie Masson]. Richard Earl as Nurse Nelly and John Weldon as her daft Welsh son Muddles were good comedy value. Three bad gags and you're off ? Well, hardly, there were some ancient classics here. But the ghost routine, enhanced with four gorillas all over the auditorium, was a triumph for the traditionalists.

Plenty of pyrotechnics, loads of frocks [wipe-clean for the kitchen sequence] and endless interaction with the audience all made for an excellent Christmas show, even if us oldies might have liked some better songs and a wittier script.

SLEEPING BEAUTY

[reviewed for The Public Reviews]

Cut to the Chase at the Queen's Theatre Hornchurch

07.12.09

We live in straitened times. So we should not be too surprised to see a cast of seven bringing us the traditional Panto tale of Sleeping Beauty.

But Cut to the Chase, the resident company at the Queen's, made a brilliant job of it. These are not panto specialists, nor telly celebrities on their uppers, but the repertory regulars giving their all in a uniquely home-grown production.

No corners cut in other areas. The sets were splendid; a beautiful architectural castle, the title of the show spelled out in thorn branches, a narrative scene tab, and an impressive Tower Room, reached by flight after flight of stairs on a revolve. The frocks, too, were made in-house: the Dame had the best of them, as is only right. Her housecoat was half-timbered with a thatch on top, she wore a wrap-around sink of dishes for the crockery routine, and for the walk-down she sported a Wife of Bath get-up, complete with horse.

Simon Jessop was Silly Billy, engaging the noisy audience, and selecting John in row C to be a willing stooge. Crusty old King Boris was given a lively performance by Marcus Webb – I loved his Samba with the Dame – Chris MacDonnell's glorious Nanny Clutterbuck, with a wicked tongue and a chesty, raspy delivery of the Les Dawson school. Lucy Thackeray was a winsome Fairy Forget-Me-Not, but no match for Jane Milligan's imposing Carabosse. She had two triumphant numbers, and “infinite skill and centuries of experience”. Sarah Scowen sang prettily as Princess Aurora, with Elliot Harper as her strapping, thigh-slapping, kitchen-boy Tom.

Nicholas Pegg's script had some clever lines in amongst the chestnuts – Camembert and Carbonara the start of a culinary theme, perhaps, and all the original numbers were by the MD, Carol Sloman. No chart covers, X-factor hits or Michael Jackson tributes here [though Susan Boyle was name-checked] but clever songs which, though not memorable, did advance the plot and set the mood - “We're not scared” for the quest, “The Dreaded Love Song”, “Go Ahead and Laugh”.

No chorus, so not a lot of dance routines, though I did appreciate the complex choreography of the Ghost number with Carabosse, which spilled out perilously into the aisles. Helping to people the stage were three teams of eight youngsters, who also were beautifully dressed.

The house was packed with schoolkids, Brownies, and, the night I was there, Mayoral parties with chains of office glinting in the dark. Between us we banished the Wicked Fairy, sang an entirely original song, and gasped at the enormous Dragon, who saved the day and carried most of the cast on his back, high over the auditorium and the swamp of despair.

this review first appeared on

ThePublicReviews.com