CINDERELLA AND THE RUNAWAY PRINCE. To 28 December.
Huddersfield
CINDERELLA AND THE RUNAWAY PRINCE
by Niladri
Tutti Frutti Theatre Company at the Lawrence Batley Theatre To 28 December 2002
24 December 11am
26 December 2pm & 5.30pm
23,27 December 2.30pm & 7pm
(28 December Sold Out)
Runs 2hr 10min One interval
TICKETS 01484 430528
boxoffice@lbt-uk.org
Review Timothy Ramsden 19 December
High energy capers keep this Cinders for the 21st century on the road.A couple of years back Tutti Frutti produced a starkly beautiful Christmas Show that put off some by denying expected Christmas cheer. Last year they imaginatively transformed Neil Duffield's Firebird (it crops up in three productions this year).
2002's homegrown Christmas play, for ages 6 and over, is more expectations-meeting than the first, less theatrically inventive than the second of its predecessors. Yet, though the script can be flat, it still offers distinctive features.
Cinderella's among the finest Christmas-linked stories; its treatment says a lot about the age that gives rise to each variant. Stuart Paterson's popular 1980s version has the girl drop the prince for her kitchen-fellow Callum, setting out to a brave new life beyond the gates. Niladri's script gives the heroine back to the prince, but – as in Charles Way's Mozartian version (currently at London's Polka Theatre) – first brings the pair together when he's playing hookey as a common lad.
Budgets mean Anji Kreft's step-mother Lucrecia has only one ugly daughter, and doubles as a royal aspirant herself. Neither she nor Lucy Atkinson's Druscilla are much of a threat. They're ridiculous nuisances from the start and it's clear Simone Laraway's deprived childhood's unlikely to hold back so lively-minded a Cinderella.
That's where the compromise between fun and story kicks in (Paterson, working to a larger scale, had space to provide both cheek by jowl; Way has a more morally complex balance between step-sisters and mum). And the Huddersfield show strips out any fairy-godmother, promoting Tom cat as Cinderella's change-agent. A sign of this show's success with audiences came when the attentively silent school crowds filling the Lawrence Batley suddenly saw the rat Tom needs as Cinders' coachman appear, cuckoo-like, from a clock. 'Behind you's' were roared from round the house.
Ryan Simons' gentle prince is offset by his biker-babe sister Alexandra – Lucy Atkinson giving a neatly contrasted performance from her Druscilla. Version and acting may have rough edges but there's a clear, modern street-level wisdom too. Leo, by the way, is a speaking decorative lion-head. In the year of the Queen Mother's death you can believe in the actor credited to the part or not.
Cinderella: Simone Laraway
Edric: Ryan Simons
Alexandra/Druscilla: Lucy Atkinson
Queen/Lucrecia: Anji Kreft
King/Tom: Stewart Thomas
Servant/Executioner: Emma Hopkinson
Leo: Percy Bowls-Lyon
Director: Niladri
Designer/Costume: Jim O' Reilly
Lighting: Nick Bache
Sound: Rupert Horder
Composer: Dominic Sales
Choreography: Stewart Thomas/The Company
2002-12-23 09:50:36