Pantomime
Sleeping Beauty
King’s Glasgow
Mary Brennan, three stars
BIG sorries, loons and quines in FurryBoots City but Elaine C Smith has returned to her panto roots in Glasgow after being the Grand Dame (and a Doric-tastic one at that) in Aberdeen. She’s Fairy Bella Houston, employed by the rulers of Glasweedgia to safeguard Princess Beauty from the evil machinations of Carabosse – you’ll probably know how the story goes, which is just as well. Narrative detail is not the strong point in this first ever QDOS panto at the King’s. The typically lavish production gets round the gaps in the plot-line by screening a couple of television news flashes – like Greek tragedy, all the really dramatic stuff happens off-stage and is reported. It’s certainly one way of making more time for the comedy cantrips and banter that, interwoven with song’n’dance routines, are the driving forces here.
Elaine C Smith, in cahoots with Johnny Mac’s genial eejit, Muddles, is wise to the fact that laughter is like magic: wordplay with local references to the fore, or the practical jokery in Twelve Days of Christmas, keeps all ages charmed and happy while Smith’s turn as Adele is a cracker. Juliet Cadzow slinks wickedly as Carabosse, voice purring with menace although Paul-James Corrigan is disappointingly underused as her daft, dim-witted son, Slimeball. Meanwhile, Beauty (Maggie Lynne) and her Prince (Will Knights) prove that love at first sight does exist – they hardly exchange a word beyond a singing duet. There is a singalong cloot – hurrah! – but audience participation is on a potentially shoogly nail when Fairy Bella and Muddles put folk on the (awkward) spot with a video camera. You won’t snooze off, for sure, with so much talent on-stage – maybe next year, let them get on with it, and ditch the gimmicky screen stuff.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here