Sleeping Beauty

Published Friday 14 December 2007 at 11:55 by Jane Coyle

Fast, furious and funny, with great music, neon coloured set and costumes and the opportunity to have a really good shout - what more could a pantomime-goer wish for?

Simon Magill has hit the seasonal note spot on, with his thoroughly contemporary updating of Sleeping Beauty, which cleverly contrives to retain all the vital elements of the traditional fairytale.

In Dan Gordon, he has a modern-day dame par excellence. Gordon’s Nanny McGee is a tartan-skirted Scottish lassie, eyeballing the audience from the off and never once letting them out of his hilariously stern grasp.

The story unfolds prettily, with Tara Lynne O’Neill, Bronagh Taggart and Christina Nelson doing a daintily subversive line as the good fairies, Lily Rose and Daff O’Dill. On the other side of the moral divide are Emma Little’s razor-sharp Vomitoria and her loud-mouthed sidekick Jo the Crow (Bernadette Brown). Captain Jack (Glen Wallace) and the Doctor - Watt not

Who - (Chris Robinson) are here too, the former providing the dashingly handsome love interest to Anne Marie Gaillard’s vivacious Princess Aurora.

Proceedings come to a climax with a frantic chase sequence through the auditorium and a madcap singalong, which leaves all present breathless, weak but very happy.