4 – 31 December
‘How did they fly? How did they fly, Mum?’ That question came from a wide-eyed little boy at the interval and his mum did not really know the answer, but ‘By magic’ seemed a good guess. We will get to just what was flying later.
In addition to that dose of magic this Cinderella delivers an abundance of glitter and glamour, much of it centred on Craig Revel Horwood. Such is his fame as a judge on Strictly Come Dancing that he has been replicated in wax at Blackpool’s Madame Tussauds. There’s stardom for you!
In this show the multi-talented Horwood plays Baroness Demonica Hardup, an imperious aristocrat threatened with poverty. With a style of singing that is often as flamboyant as his outrageously extravagant costumes he delivers the role with great hauteur and just the right degree of boo-earning menace. Will the baroness succeed in marrying off one her pair of dreadful daughters to the handsome prince? You know the answer of course, for pantomimes thrive on familiarity, and this Cinderella has all the ingredients you would expect.
Not the least important of those ingredients is audience participation. Panto stalwart Andy Ford has long been an expert at establishing a rapport with an audience. Here, as Buttons, he raises a laugh with even the clunkiest of puns, and the sequence where his clothes disappear item by item every time that he tells a fib is guaranteed to bring shrieks of delight from younger punters.
Ford employs his West Country shtick to good effect, though the frequent references to ‘Bristle’ are perhaps just a little overdone. Innocent jollity pervades, with a great deal of verbal silliness and slapstick mayhem. The humour in this show stays well within the bounds of family friendliness, and those few jokes that stray into off-colour territory are a very light shade of blue: ‘This is where he holds his balls and dances’ is unlikely to bring on an attack of the vapours.
Some Hippodrome pantos in recent years have been very strong on spectacle but a little lacking in sweetness and romance. In this show the relationship between Lauren Hampton’s winsome Cinderella and Oliver Savile’s strong-voiced Prince is given due attention, with the traditional narrative being tweaked a little so that they meet and fall in love well before the royal ball. The baroness’s daughters, Claudia and Tess, never stand a chance. Played with gleeful nastiness by Leanne Jones and Catherine Morris, they are not billed as ‘The Ugly Sisters’, presumably because that might be deemed ‘lookist’.
At the start this Cinderella is rather slow to get into its stride, but before too long there is a great deal to dazzle and delight. There is a proper live orchestra, rousing songs and some impressively energetic dancing – watch out for the hoofing pumpkins! The magical flying that so entranced that little boy features Cinderella’s coach, which is pulled aloft by astonishingly realistic white horses – a veritable coup de théâtre and the undoubted highlight of the whole show. It will not only be children who are left wondering how it is done. Many thousands will go to see this year’s Hippodrome panto, and few, if any, will leave disappointed. They will certainly remember that airborne coach.
★★★★☆ Mike Whitton, 9th December, 2022
Photo credit: Stephen Lewis
