The Garrick’s pantos have always been good value since the theatre’s artistic director Adrian Jackson took them in hand, but this one tops the lot.
As music supremo this year he conducts the brilliant Cinderella Band while star dame Ian Adams has authored a racy and very funny script that goes back to the original Perrault fairy tale, setting the action firmly in a traditionally English stereotyped vision of France.
Julie Paton’s choreography gives the whole production a reassuringly grown-up feel while John Brooking’s ingenious sets and lavish costumes give the show a reassuring aura of luxury. The result is a West End production that’s pure theatrical joy without West End eye-watering ticket prices.
Cinderella is always a favourite panto because it’s the most optimistic story on earth – poor girl meets, and keeps, her prince against all the odds, and in this year’s all-new show it’s retold so colourfully that the result is sheer laugh-out-loud enjoyment for all ages.
In a marvellous hand-picked cast from tiny-tot first-time performers to seasoned old troupers some names stand out.
Oliver Ormson really is charming as the Prince of that name, while the porcelain loveliness of Samantha Dorsey makes her the perfect choice for the ingénue Cinderella. Arthur Bostrum (’Allo ’Allo) is assured and genuinely funny as the prince’s sidekick Count Dandini de Tartare, and it’s a truly brilliant coup to have the traditional Ugly Sisters transformed into lager-swigging TOWIE ladettes.
Kate Playdon as Mademoiselle Brie and Stacey Victoria Bland as Mademoiselle Camembert are the far from genteel young things their mother hopes will catch their men. Played as hysterically funny man-chasers they are gross, grotesque and grabby. But it’s Andrea Miller as their mother Madame Brie who nearly steals the show as a real, determined fixer with a nasty edge brought on by the exasperating task of trying to find husbands for the monsters she has spawned.
But of course the brightest star in this production is Ian Adams, the most accomplished dame in all showbiz, as Madame Zuleika. Never grotesque, his genial characterisation of this gypsy fortune teller is dainty, good-humoured but with a workaday common streak that shouts reality. His gags come thicker than sequins on a Strictly Come Dancing frock as he propels the show forward with the lightest of touches.
Give yourself a treat this Christmas and celebrate your inner child, whatever your official age. This joyous Cinderella is a master class in traditional entertainment. Cinderella runs at the Lichfield Garrick until January 4, 2015.
