Sleeping Trees' Panto for Theatre503 returns for the 2018 festive season at the venue this year: the review below is from the original 2014 run.
Sleeping Trees’s new show ‘Cinderella and the Beanstalk’ is a mega-mix pantomime medley: a story that cooks up the adventures of all of your favourite fairytale heroes, heroines and villains into a stage stew and then adds a dash of panto pandemonium for extra kick.
In the style of The League of Gentleman – the father to Sleeping Trees’s Monty Python mother – a trio of elfish, onesie-wearing clowns play a cast of 40 plus. It could be chaotic, and it is a little. But Tom Attenborough’s tight direction, the energy of this very charming ensemble and some genuinely good original music from Mark Newnham means this raucous panto pulls it off.
Soon after falling in love with her feckless Prince Charming, Cinders is blackmailed by Rumpelstiltskin to climb up Jack’s beanstalk and steal back three golden eggs. Along the way we meet her two gorgeously grotesque ugly sisters, a garrulous genie, Snow White, Red Riding Hood, the Little Mermaid, Big Ears, Peter Pan and Father Christmas, amongst a firmament of others.
James Dunnell-Smith, Joshua George Smith and John Woodburn jump from character to character with a seemingly unnatural elasticity. It’s got a lot to do with relish, which they employ liberally, but they also come from a tradition of anarchic buffoonery that’s underpinned by a militantly controlled skill.
Newnham’s tunes are catchy and funny, and there’s enough in the silly stage business and witty script to please both little ’uns and big ’uns alike. This is a mega-mix that’s truly mega.
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