Pantomime
Cinderella
The Beacon, Greenock
Mary Brennan
FOUR STARS
All across the Pantosphere, there are undoubtedly better dressed shows. If that was a prerequisite for fun, this would be a Cinderella production not just in name but in nature. If, like the Prince, you look for something beyond superficial appearances, then this Cinderella will win you over - will make you laugh, entertain you non-stop, and even melt your heart when Buttons (Paul James Corrigan) quells the shyness behind his attempts at wee hard man behaviour and asks Cinders to marry him.
Writer Alan McHugh does like to tweak traditions, but he - and Cinderella's Fairy Godmother (a bubbly, enthusiastic Jane McCarry) - are persuaded that the Prince is her Mr Right. So despite the audience going crazy, shouting "YES! YES!", Buttons gets the (albeit gentle) knock-back...
Last year, in the Beacon's first ever panto, Corrigan played the lovable eejit who is totally bamboozled by life. This time, he serves up an interestingly different kind of lummock. His Buttons (in dungarees) is a bit of a head-banger: all husky voiced, face folding into grimaces as if he was in a perpetual but endlessly hilarious radge against the trying circumstances that prevail against him in Stoneybroke.
Among those circumstances are Foxy (James Young) and Roxy (Paul McCole), two wonderfully lurid Dames who spat and spar with just a sashay of camp but are pure dead common with it - a rerr perr o' middens, in fact. Samantha Shields (Cinderella) and Craig Anthony Ralston (Prince Charming) bring a lovely freshness to the fairy-tale romance and, like the rest of the cast, they can really sing. It's the inspired triumph of dash over cash, folks - the very best spirit of panto!
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