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Five Stars (*****)
Bling. Yes, that's the word for this show. Used as one of the words in the audience participation song, it reflects the glitter of this whole production.
Julian Chenery, of Shakespeare 4 Kidz, created and directed
larger-than-life characters and verbal and visual jokes. Colin
Warnock's original score added musical amusement, like the trumpeters
lapsing into a jazz fanfare and the faint whispers of famous West End
musical numbers creeping into the melodies.
This being the Mitre
Players, there was a sub-plot to the traditional tale of faries,
spinning wheels and sleeping for one hundred years.
How Do You
Solve A Problem Like Aurora spoofed the TV wannabee shows as
contestants fought to be Lord Andrew Lloyd Warnock's leading lady in
his new production.
Much comedy was derived from the judges who
hammed up the already larger-than-life TV personalities and thus John
Barrowboy (Sam Cook), Martini Phillips (Tamsin Reeve) and Bill
Can'twrite (Peter Bramwell) emphasised the worst in their take-off,
under the eye of th Irish Leprechaun Graham Horne (Joss Brazier) and
the aforementioned Lord (Fraser Macdonald).
Back in the real tale
there were interlopers like Prince Keith (Neil O'Gorman) who claimed
the baby Aurora as his bride only to be too old when she finally awoke,
and Adam Roddie as Richard III, the wicked hunchback in the evil
Carabosse's pay, alongside the beautifully-costumed winged monkeys
straight out of the Wizard of Oz.
Colin Warnock delivered Dolly
Sumpling as a cheeky but wonderfully dressed dame. I loved the Fairy
liquid costume with the hands on the hat. Paul Longhurst made the comic
duo work as Muddles 'her' son, with some great visual memory gags.
A
pretty, tuneful Cat Coe was a sweet panto Aurora and Alan Merricks and
Lorraine Price her doting parents - King and Queen of Slumberland.
Kelly Bennett's Carabosse was elegantly evil.
The three choreographers created diverse and interesting dance routines and Keith O'Gorman conducted a most tuneful band.
Mark
Curtis over-egged his allure as the conceited Prince Colin and
alongside some unusual cameo roles not normally part of this tale, the
chorus of little bed-bugs - children of grown-up (I think!) Mitres
stole the show.
Theo Spring
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