The Stage

Sleeping Beauty

Published Tuesday 22 December 2009 at 14:45 by Richard Edmonds

This is the kind of gorgeous, no expense spared, razzmatazz spectacular, where the sets and costumes almost take over from the actors - a remarkable panto set within a gilt-edged theatricality which does much to lift the spirits in these depressing days.

The show gets off to a great start with Ceri Dupree’s exotic Lady Passionella, a glamorous dame who revives poignant memories of the late, great Danny La Rue. At times you close your eyes for a moment and it could be La Rue speaking, so perfectly has Dupree mastered that style of stressing the middle vowel then fading out the sentence.

Add to this a finely shaped sense of comedy and a king’s ransom in frocks, and you can see why patrons are talking warmly about the Hippo’s return to the good old days when panto was panto.

Comedian Joe Pasquale plays Muddles and his chatty persona has audience appeal, especially when he flies on a wire to save the much beleagured Princess Beauty.

The 3D interactive scenes are terrific fun, getting the audience screaming and shouting as an assortment of the nice and the noxious zooms out. They are colourful sequences, but no more splendid than the arrival in mid-air of the wicked Carabosse, played by the terrific Ria Jones, whose detestation of Sleeping Beauty scarcely lets up. The show is packed with well dressed, handsomely staged musical numbers and Ray Quinn does his best with one of panto’s totally implausible princes.