Cinderella
Cinderella, King’s Head Theatre’s first family panto, is packed with talent and is a lot of fun… when its elements truly mesh together. But it doesn’t reach the perfect pinnacle of festive silliness you want it to.
The show’s pedigree is impeccable. Writer and director Andrew Pollard spent 15 years as Greenwich Theatre’s dame-in-residence. RuPaul’s Drag Race UK's Ella Vaday (Nick Collier) is Ugly Stepsister Peckham. Real-life Dame of the realm, Judi Dench, is our pre-recorded narrator. We also get voiceover contributions from bona fide camp British icons Su Pollard and Miriam Margolyse.
The setting is vaguely historical, the tone distinctly disco and the plot heavily aquatic. The latter doesn’t make a lick of sense but certainly gives us the groan-worthy puns we expect from panto. Lucia Vinyard’s ‘Fairy Codmother’ pops out of ‘Sadler’s Well’ – given the King’s Head’s location, we get a steady stream of jokes about Islington – to help Cinderella (Maddy Erzan-Essien) go to the ball. Which is on a boat.
Pollard’s production gets off to a slow start, with some oddly subdued singing as part of its mix of classic and modern chart songs. A wistful opening ballad and an underpopulated stage gives low-energy panto, not ‘wow, kids’! While this lessens, there’s still a tendency for big solo numbers to land quietly.
The appearance of Vaday as Peckham and Harry Curley as her scrunched-faced sister Dalston is a shot of adrenalin. Their rabble-rousing audience schtick – all seaside...