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 humour and arched eyebrows – gives the King’s Head its queens. They’re also a chance to showcase Gregory Donnelly’s inventive costume designs and Pollard’s way with a set-piece. A bathtub sequence riffing on Jaws is deliciously stupid.
If anything, Dalston and Peckham are such a strong double-act – almost navigating that suggestively shaped line between child-friendly innuendo and totally adult humour – their absence is glaring when they’re not on stage. But Verity Kirk is great value as a ludicrously Italian (and secretly female) Dandini. Robert Rees perfects the dead-eyed grin of a CBeebies presenter as Buttons.
Cinderella, her glass slipper and her royal beau get pretty lost in this mix, but the contrivance leading to Joseph Lukehurst’s Prince Charming being topless for most of the first act is hilariously flimsy. Pollard’s production works best when steering into naughtier waters without dipping too deeply into the adult version of the show that is playing select performances on some nights (do check before booking!).
What stops this from being a true panto belter – as entertaining as it is in places, particularly thanks to Peckham and Dalston – is its inconsistency. It fudges a few too many key moments of its tale. There’s some appropriately silly swan-related puppetry and Cinderella’s ball dress reveal is nicely done. But a late appearance by a puppet Evil Stepmother (voiced by Margolyse) is rushed and ill-explained.
But I don’t want to be too boo-hiss about it. When this show is firing on all cylinders, swapping messiness for controlled chaos, it’s a real hoot.
