Pantomime
Sleepin’ Cutie
MacRobert Arts Centre, Stirling
Mary Brennan
***
SO HERE we are again, folks, in Stirling-Stella. This is where traditional fairy tales come to be made over - with maybe a mischievous tweak in who’s who or an imaginatively warped twist in the plot, courtesy of writer Johnny McKnight who this season is not in Stirling-Stella, because he’s Dame-ing it at the Tron in Glasgow.
It’s hard to say what difference his actual presence on stage in Sleepin’ Cutie would have made. There are some cracking talents going over the top here, many of them - like Robert Jack and Helen McAlpine - returning to the archetypes they’ve made their own in previous years, but old hand or newcomer there’s no sense of anyone holding back on the frolics’n’foolery.
So why do the uber-garish costumes in Act One seem to have more sparkle and daftness than the show itself? It could be because the entire act is given over to a heavily-laden exposition of Bonnie’s back-story, from before she was born up to the moment she gets the needle (in her finger) and falls asleep. Too much information, often sidelining the comedy and the pace, despite Keith McLeish parading around in grotesque outfits as clutzy FairyB, McAlpine hunkering down as the ridiculous rank bad yin, Queenie McMeanie and Jack making the Jester totally lovable as he yearns after Bonnie (Kara Swinney).
It all perks up, and hits its panto stride in Act Two. McAlpine and her eejit son Leanie (Gavin Wright) work well together, the song and dance routines really click - the locally recruited young cast are a real asset here - and even if today’s young audiences are unaware of yesteryear’s trope of the principal boy as a thigh-slapping girl, they appreciate Katie Barnett’s squeaky-voiced swagger as Prince Charming. So - maybe not Stirling-Stella’s hottest panto-property ever, but as it runs in, Sleepin’ Cutie could prove a bundle of fun yet.
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