sleeping beauty review

I thought visually it was excellent, very nice looking costumes, sets and lighting. I thought the cast did extremely well with what they had to work with, in particular the three fairies (Ali Hill, Jennifer Godleman and Meagan Crowe) and the court jester (Kim Godleman). However I thought the cast were really let down by their production team. The script was... not good. And that is putting it very gently I think. I don't know who chooses the scripts at MPAC but whoever it is really needs to put a bit more time and effort into making sure they have a good script. The show was advertised as a pantomime. It was not a pantomime, there were maybe two pantomime bits throughout the show and that was it. It was also extremely short, but considering how slow and boring the script was, maybe that was a good thing. I thought direction was on a whole good, but several very basic points were missed. The glaringly obvious was the spinning wheel blocking Sleeping Beauty after she was pricked... you couldn't see her at all until everyone went into the castle (once the spinning wheel was finally moved, the court jester was put in the way. It was quite frustrating). There were a few other basic things which seemed out of place. It was a REALLY slow show, the lines were delivered really slowly, large pauses between them, too much waiting for movement (for example waiting for people to slowly walk across the entire stage). The pace really should have been faster for a pantomime. Choreography was ... again not good. The dancers themselves did them quite well, but the choreography itself was too ... whats the words... dance school like? Not sure if you'll understand what I mean, but it looked like a choreography you would give a class in a dance school to perform at a dance concert. Not a choreography for a show. It was very boring and repetitive. Music, whilst repetitive and unmemorable was very well played by the band. I saw Luke Savage was musical director, so little surprises there. I went and saw the Aladdin Pantomime down at MLT the other weekend, and although it was brilliantly done, they had backing tracks for all their songs which just doesn't quite have the same feel to it unfortunately. So it was nice to hear the live band playing out all those tunes. But anyway as I said, the biggest stand outs were the cast. You should all be very proud of what you did. You could see how hard you were trying to get everything across. You did not have a good script to work with, or good songs, but you pushed and pushed and pushed, trying to get the audience into it. Special mentions to: The Three Fairies: Hill, Godleman and Crowe were very good, LOVELY singing, and it was nice to see the different types of character each fairy had. Godleman's ditzy fairy was particularly funny at times. The Court Jester: Another Godleman (talented family? - I'm sure I've seen Jennifer as a Jennifer Wickam in the past so maybe they're married) didn't have a single line I don't think, however stole the show with his antics. I overheard someone in the foyer saying afterwards that his character wasn't even in the script and was added. Which makes you wonder how bad the original script must have been. Who would choose that? Sleeping Beauty: Rebecca Boddy. I've only ever seen this girl on stage once before and that was in Murray's recent pantomime Mother Goose, in which she stole the show as the hilarious Bodgit (or was it Scratchit?), so it was interesting to see her in this role (VERY different role). Well Done to her, she has a nice sweet voice. The Blue Fawn: Dylan Brown despite the boring choreography he was set, I thought did a really good job of his character. Silent characters, despite having easier lines to learn can be really difficult to get across to the audience so well done. Trollarina: Paul Treasure. I've not seen this guy on stage before but I was impressed with what he did with it. Although you couldn't really hear him when he was singing, mike should have been louder during the songs. Being the Pantomime Dame and the villain at the same time would have been interesting to do I imagine. I'm not sure who played it, but special kudos needs to go to Trollarina's minion that followed him around. Particularly funny to watch.