SLEEPING BEAUTY: Read and Thomas: Salisbury Playhouse until 6th January 2007.

Sleeping Beauty by Joanna Read and Stuart Thomas. Wednesday 6th December 2006 to Saturday 6th January 2007 times vary.

Running Time 2 hours 20 minutes

Review Mark Courtice: 3rd January 2007

Seasonal favourite glitters less this year
Joanna Read and Stuart Thomas have an impressive track record at Salisbury, creating the last 4 traditional pantos. Each has been distinguished by all the proper elements including audience participation, clever words, tunes you want to sing along with, and glittering design. Modern irrelevancies like soap stars and dodgy jokes have been firmly ignored.

This year all the ingredients are there but it seems as if the whole effort is about going through the motions. The script efficiently tells the old story but from time to time lurches disastrously into unfunny stuff about 'choppers'.

As before, the design relies on cloths hung in a traditional arch, but this time we miss the sly humour, the telling detail, and most seriously the lashings of glitter and colour. To see the walkdown between banisters decorated with tree glitter seemed to be taking economy too far.

The company appear to have been chosen for their singing rather than acting. The songs are really well done with clever harmonies, flexible and tuneful singing helping for instance to create bravura musical jokes. The acting is less clever and confident, so jokes seem feebler and we only go 'aah' because we should rather than we might feel anything.

Mark Cameron as Nurse Nancy looks terrific, sounds manly but cheeky just as a dame ought to and invests the physical gags (many of which are fab - a slosh fight reprised in slow motion was masterly) with excellent timing, but this is not reflected in acting where timing was often out.

Charlotte Bignell's baddie Poison Ivy was evil enough, but needed more time to establish a relationship with the audience. Her aerialist skills added to her weirdness but made it hard to act upside down on the mid air cloths. Jonathan Stewart's Simon and Joe Fredericks' Creeping Wally were both effective and attractive as the good and bad halves of the same simple type.

Director Jeremy Bond marshals the team to tell an efficient story but is clearly happier with the knockabout than people actually talking to each other.

Fairy Felicity Aimee Thomas
Simon Jonathan Stewart
Nurse Nancy Mark Cameron
King Harold Mark Gillis
Queen Mable Daniele Coombe
Poison Ivy Charlotte Bicknell
Creeping Wally Joe Fredericks
Princess Aurora Diana Eskell
Prince Peter Rupert Young

Director Jeremy Bond
Designer Sue Condie
Musical Director Andrew Allpass
Lighting Designer Peter Hunter
Choreographer Melanie Bond

2007-01-08 14:06:27