The Stage

Cinderella and the Glass Slipper

Published Monday 10 December 2007 at 12:40 by Hugh Homan

For the inaugural panto back in the magnificently restored Theatre Royal, director Colin Blumenau presents Cinders on the Steppes. Kit Surrey’s Russian backdrops - a towering snow-bedecked forest, icons galore and a chunky baronial kitchen - are impressive. The cast, in anachronistic panto tradition, is wildly Russian, camply Welsh, lumpily Scottish and sweetly English.

The transformation scene lacks the wow factor but the company throughout is superb, with lots of laughs and some very funny comedy business. Jodie Kumble is a lovely, sweet Cinderella and sings and dances with style and panache. Janet Greaves has a wonderful time as the overbearing Russian matriarch Countess Grimallova. You can cut her accent with a scimitar and no doubt hear her in Moscow. Gladys Glasnost, in the capable size tens of Gregory Ashton, is very funny: coquettish, and with that insinuating accent of the Valleys, she compels attention from first to last. Prudence Perestroika is less well imagined as a role - a gruff, masculine, brainless Glaswegian - but Ben Watson does what he can and stomps around amusingly. Ben Fleetwood Smyth is a genuinely affecting Prince Charminsky while Joe Evans is a refreshingly straightforward Buttons.

MD and composer Annemarie Lewis Thomas provides some delightful original music - the Royal Russian Tango is terrific. We all left humming happily.