SLEEPING BEAUTY. To 17 January.

Hornchurch

SLEEPING BEAUTY
by Nicholas Pegg Music and lyrics by Carol Sloman

Queen's Theatre To 17 January 2004
Mon-Thu 6.30pm Fri-Sat 7pm Mat Th-Fri 2pm Sat 2.30pm
Runs 2hr 25min One interval

TICKETS: 01708 443333
Review: Timothy Ramsden 3 January

Trad. Panto with a distinctive musical input.Two puffs of smoke. Good Fairy stage-right, bad Fairy stage-left. You know where you with this show. It's colourful, with the main setting in King Caractacus's palace (a royal name destined to be repeatedly mangled) a rainbow-bright stone-effect from designer Dinah England. And it exploits the strengths of Hornchurch's Ensemble, collectively named cut to the chase'.

There are plenty of points of audience contact. Jim Bywater's Dame, for instance, who can still quell the regal authority of James Earl Adair's clumsy-footed monarch. But her fancy interactions need to be reserved for big moments. So there's Richard Emerson's Silly Billy. Emerson's good at engaging audience sympathy - and needs to be with greetings at every entry. His other trick is to get us to shout Hanky Panky' whenever he's about to sneeze, summoning an initial shred of handkerchief which grows till it constitutes the song-sheet for the final audience participation.

As in many pantos, one unwitting soul in the front rows is singled out and good-humouredly picked on thereafter (delighted Schadenfreude springs instantly among the relieved rest of us). This performance it was Ray, from Grays, who proved well up to the job, conducting the rest of us through the wedding-song while Bywater and Emerson privately effected their final costume change with no plot left to tide them over.

Audience interaction counts for most of the best moments in a panto that respects its story without letting narrative get overmuch in the way. The other point of contact is nice Fairy Forget-Me-Not, a slim silvery figure finely played by Loveday Smith as a Yorkshire Fairy who fills every sentence with the inane, and innately comic, earnest intensity of someone who couldn't tell you the time without making it sound deeply significant.

Then there are the Troubadours, mainly from mobile string quartet Bebeto. One apparently plans to play Bach while snowboarding down seriously perilous mountainsides, so it's unsurprising these four wheel, whirl and cringe from Carol Sloman's suitably dark Carabosse while keeping the strings vibrating in tune. It's a nice joke that, offstage, composer/musical director Sloman is responsible for their backing tracks.

Fairy Forget-Me-Not: Loveday Smith
Fairy Carabosse: Carol Sloman
Troubadours: Dmitri van Zwanenberg, Edward Bruggermeyer, Jo Drake, Margit van der Zwan
Silly Billy: Richard Emerson
King Caractacus: James Earl Adair
Nanny Clutterbuck: Jim Bywater
Princess Aurora: Emily Gardner
Tom Clutterbuck: Nick Lashbrook
Young Company: Blue Team: Stephanie Middleton, Charlie Young, Oliver Shepherd, Lauren Roberets, Zoe Stockwell, Luke Robertson, Jodie Chatterill-Mooney, Emma Mack
Red Team: Rickie Vale, Emma Whitbread, Rhianne Green, Hannah-Marie Keeble, Joe Keyworth, Jonathan Riordan, Katie Perrin, Jade Hendrick
Green Team: Sascha Hilder, Chloe Hilder, Katie Stephen, Adam Green, Sean Wade, Rebecca Barrett, Drew Hudson, Darcy Gregory

Director: Matt Devitt
Designer: Dinah England
Lighting: Chris Jaeger
Sound: Ed Clarke
Musical Director: Carol Sloman
Choreography/Musical Staging: Anita Pashley

2004-01-04 18:13:17